"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come---maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.It's a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you've been and how people
and weather treated you. It's a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, " Here, take it, it's yours."" --- William Stafford
The first Dreamtouched to touch the Crossroads bale were the Nunnehi. The Crossroads was the place of their feet, down at the base of the mountains which contained their fortress lodges - it was the place between the heavens and mortal men, a required stop for meditation before interacting with the world of the mortals.
In these mythic days the great tales were being played out everywhere on earth. The world itself was young, and like all young things the world seemed more alive and more passionate. Its tragedies were deeper, its joys lighter and sparkling, and the echoes of these stories yet survive, though the world's youth has faded.
Some Nunnehi blame the coming of the Paper Ones for the decline of the world. How can you put the world into words and not lose something in the translation? Children experience the world all at once, not left to right, top to bottom, page by page. The truth of this theory, as with all theories about how the Dreaming operates, is unknown.
Nonetheless it is true that the coming of European settlers crippled the Nunnehi. No longer were wildernesses trackless, or known only as one knows a person, by seeing its face and touching it, but they could be constrained with maps and land-deeds. As the native population whose children became Nunnehi were alternately absorbed, pushed back, and annihilated, so too the nunnehi found themselves marginalized.
The Cumberland Moutains were the first frontier of America. In 1763, George III ordered all settlers to stay east of the Cumberlands, to avoid continued conflict with the French and Indian tribes. This order was promptly ignored. The area including the Cumberland Gap was taken from the Cherokee Indian tribes as part of a land deal brokered in March 1775 by Richard Henderson and a group of investors. The chief Attakullakulla argued in favor of the deal to his tribe, and was opposed by his son, Dragging Canoe. In the end, the Cherokee accepted the deal. Dragging Canoe promised that the settlers would find the land a "dark and bloody ground".
East Tennessee was settled largely by people from the British Isles, and anyone with a darker complexion was typically of Indian or African descent. But several communities arose in the 18th century - nobody is sure from where - of "melungeons", people with blue eyes, straight blonde or black hair, and darker than usual skin. After decades of mistreatment and prejudice, most of the "melungeons" had married into the population and almost completely disappeared by the twentieth century.
The final straw for the Crossroads came just after the American Revolution, when the natives of Eastern Tennessee were forcibly pacified by the authorities. So many families moved west that the Nunnehi were forced to abandon the lodge they had constructed at the Crossroads. It was handed over to David Hogganbeck, a boggan half-breed who was sympathetic with the nunnehi. He swore he would care for it, and is usually thought of as the first European Lord of Crossroads.
Crossroads became a key place for expansion of the Kithain into the west, the only way that they could keep up even a little bit with their mortal cousins who spread across America like water spilled on a table. Although the journey upon a trod from European lands was tremendously difficult and dangerous, it was quicker than a sea voyage on mortal waters (and perhaps more importantly, cost less.) But eventually the Kingdom of Western Roads had to move further west, and then further west still. Crossroads again became an important but ancillary location of Kithain power. (The Kingdom of Western Roads was last sighted in Los Angeles just before the invention of the motion picture.)
One worrisome industry was the Iron Furnace at Cumberland, which at its peak produced 43 pigs of iron a day. It eventually closed in 1880.
"Fill your canteens, boys! Some of you will be in hell before night, and you'll need water!" --- Union commander before the battle of ShilohThe first true cataclysm to come to the Crossroads (as opposed to tragedy) was the Civil War. Eastern Tennessee was very low on slaveholders and very high on Union sentiment, and therefore saw some of the bloodiest guerilla fighting, the most bitter divisions between neighbors and family members, and some of the harshest fighting. Shiloh is about two hours to the south by the new highway, where the battle can best be described as "shotguns at two paces in the fog", for example. Kithain refugees streamed through Crossroads, some born to slave families, some deserters from a collapsing army, still others burned out of their homes by Sherman's March to the Sea. The balefire dimmed with the strain, coming near to extinguishment.
It was saved by a gang of Ravaging marauders, led by a redcap bandit named Minor. These Kithain extended their bloody raids, pillaging, raping and slaughtering across the South, fat on terror-dreams, seemingly invincible. Inevitably they were drawn to Crossroads as the best place for a headquarters. From there they could strike anywhere, after all, and if they ran into too much resistance, they could just ruin a trod and forget about it. They struck in the dead of night, killed everyone (twice) and in their bloody revelry, scattered the bodies across the nation.
News was slow to travel in those days, even news of Crossroads among Kithain, who were laboring under strained conditions just to survive, and so there was no Seelie response for some time. Indeed, the War was technically over by the time a force of commoners, under the banner of the Duke of Knox, managed to oust the marauders. The balefire was again strong, but naturally sullen and blood-red. The full extent of damage (and improvement) to the trods by these wild-eyed psychotics is yet unknown.
"Living on the road my friendAt its height, the bards tell us, the Crossroads was terminus to ten thousand trods, and full of comings and goings all the day and night, to all corners of the earth, and not just to places, there were trods to take you to great dreamers or other worlds or other times if only you knew where to turn, what to say, how to step. Surely this is exaggeration. Nonetheless there were at the very least hundreds of trods going and coming, wide and alive.
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath's as hard as kerosene
You weren't your mama's only boy
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams." --- Townes Van Zandt
Now there are three.
A cruel and opportunistic Unseelie coup following the nightmarish burst of
energy that followed the 9-11 attacks has made the Kingdom of Apples into
a dangerous land of guerilla warfare and great opportunity, as the
entrenched power structure is falling apart at the seams. The winter seat
of the High King and the home of the Parliament of Dreams, Loyalist
sentiment is very high in New York City, but the dangers of the Shadow
Court are also great. Because of Unseelie attacks, the King has appointed
a Reeve, the eshu swordsman LaShawn Hardy.
Technically part of the Kingdom of Willows, the Duchy of Orleans has
and has always operated independently, barely even paying lip service to
the edicts of King Meilge. After throwing open their borders and doors
during the Accordance War, Orleans became a neutral ground full of spies
and counterspies, secrets and searchers. This has persisted to this day.
The large amount of iron in the city makes scrying practically impossible,
in or out, and so it is ideal for secret meetings and communications. The
Duchess of Orleans, Seana Les Yeux, a French Quarter-dwelling sidhe, is
said to have her eyes and ears everywhere in the city.
The third trod goes to a place called Nowhere, Kansas. This ghost town is
not notable for anything anyone knows about. Why the trod terminates there
is a mystery that has not yet been solved.
Tennessee is an area riddled with caves - there are two publically accessible caves near Cumberland Gap. One, a deep but commercialized cave, was used in the Civil War for storage by both armies. It is called "Cudjo's Cave" after the 1864 novel which used the cave as a centerpiece. Sand Cave, really a "rock house" almost an acre and a quarter in size, is nature's largest sandbox, with a waterfall pouring down one side. It is popular with children. Beneath Cumberland mountain, several other cave complexes were recently uncovered (including one entrance 85 feet high and another with an underground lake 30 feet deep), as obstacles to the construction of the U.S. 25 tunnel, but they were all bypassed and closed off.
Other recent programs include wiring the schools for the Internet (which has led to an overall improvement in ISP coverage), improving roads in rural areas, maintaining the Park, and improving the fire department facility.
City government is small in Cumberland Gap, the City Clerk and Mayor being the only elected positions, and neither pays that well. The City Clerk handles recordkeeping, zoning, business matters and oversees the once-a-week parking ticket hearing. (There are two rent-a-cops that pass out parking tickets. Real law enforcement for the area is handled by the Claiborne County Sheriff's Department.
Cumberland Gap is home to a bluegrass and folk music comeptition with musical seminars throughout the year. Most of the playing is done at the high school's auditorium or the "Civic Center" (a big open room next to City Hall.)
Highway 25E goes across the state line and through the tunnel to Middlesboro, Kentucky, a nice sized town of about 15-20,000 people. State Road 32 goes south towards Knoxville. State Road 63 goes west along the Powell Valley. State Road 58 goes east and a little north into Lee County, Virginia. Other nearby townships are Gibson Station, Forge Ridge, Poplar Grove, Little Creek, Bacchus, Vancel Mill, and Patterson Crossroads.
Other than the Cumberland mountains to the north and the Cumberland Plateau itself, natural features include a dozen small creeks, hollows, hills and springs. The largest river nearby is the Indian River, a tributary of the Cumberland. The Indian is a fairly healthy river (protected at several places along its length by state and federal parks and wilderness reserves, and is home to smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, spotted bass, white bass, brown and rainbow trout, crappie bluegill and catfish.
A scattering of natural freeholds can be found pin-pointing bits of wilderness here and there, small towns and hidden glades. These are usually very teeny tiny and only support a few Changelings at most.
The next significant freeholds past Knoxville is Oakhurst, a formerly gleaming hold outside Oak Ridge Tennessee, whose walls are now covered in rot and a sickly glow - the nockers who control it are among the more demented and dangerous of the kin.
The Great Smoky Mountain National Park hides a tall-towered castle, one of the seats of King Meilge of Willows. Controlled by a Reeve, the castle is "technically" a freehold, but those not loyal to Meilge are given a distinctly cold shoulder until they leave. It is the nearest freehold equal in power to the Crossroads.
At the other end of the state are the Memphis and Nashville holds - again, a scattering of balefires in the backs of dance halls, roadhouses and B-B-Q joints, with a few significant ones. Duke Eltan's seat is at Music's Home, an active and lively freehold with many visitors coming and going. His right-hand-woman, the sidhe Myrtle Westlake, controls the Equality Club, which sprang into astonishingly strong existence in 1955 with the burst of hope given to African-Americans by the Brown vs. Board of Education decision and fueled by the civil rights movement. Westlake is often torn between the egalitarian nature of the hold and her own duties as liege-lady. The self-proclaimed Fattest Boggan Ever, Sara Fulham, runs the Bar-B-Que Palace (which is named the same thing in the real world as it is in the mundane world), which serves the Sara-proclaimed Best Bar-B-Que Anywhere, with additional strength of enchantment due to the magical herbs and spices she puts in her sauce.
Because New York and New Orleans are only a couple of hours away, I should also mention holds there, just in general.
New York's most impressive holds are the High Court of Summer, the classical castle fronting on Central Park, where the High King's court is throughout the summer months. (The Winter Court is in the Duchy of Angels in Southern California, an almost terminally progressive desmene politically speaking) and the Parliament of Dreams, accessible through the (much more impressive chimerically) nonexistent 13th floor of the Flatiron Building, a beautiful and ornamented meeting building similar to Parliament in London. The most obviously quirky freehold is an Art Deco skyscraper (mostly empty, and probably shrinking) that looks like it came from the cover of a 1930s pulp science fiction magazine. Ruled by the Baron Ace Liberty, a jetpack-wearing pooka (who, by the way, you now know everything you need to know about), the City of the Future freehold is a favored spot of visitors not quite in favor with the High Court but not quite so downtrodden as to go to one of the many hidden holds scattered here and there. The Unseelie nocker and boggan stronghold called Goblintown is somewhere in New York City, but nobody can tell quite where - the sluagh's tunnels beneath the city are said to go deep, to the center of the world.
New Orleans' holds include a marvelous scattering of musical clubs, but the most impressive is somewhere in the French Quarter, which to Changeling eyes is even more fantastical and difficult to navigate without stumbling into some chimerical corner or another. Unfortunately (?) contained by cold iron, the Glamour of the French Quarter tends to pull Changelings towards the court of the Duchess Les Yeux whether they really want to be there or not. A commoner hold, the gambling riverboat called the Loser's Club, run by a grump satyr named Clinton Bodean, is the strongest commoner hold anywhere in Louisiana, and has the advantage of mobility.