Begin with the Lively Maid
There once was a Lively beggar-girl, dirty and heedless and gay in the face of misfortune. She traveled the North Country with a sister and brother, while a Golden Bird watched over them.
The day came when beggars and bird arrived at a harvest festival outside a ruined castle. Its walls moldered, unneeded since the extinction of giants long ago. A meadow separated its fallen stones from the town and all about that meadow, what a hotchpotch of tents, awnings, banners and carts, flags and wagons, long tables, short stalls, open firepits. A mingle-mangle of misrule: nobles and peasants, ladies and milkmaids, wandering knights, itinerate peddlers, wives selling pies, nuns selling penance, merchants and ruffians and a band of traveling players who had with them a dancing bear.
A fine place for canny beggars. The crowd, full of ale and good feelings, stood ready with a coin or an apple for whatever might make them laugh.
Lively was a laugh-maker — a small trickster, as quick and remorseless as a summer squall. She spirited away into the hubbub before her Clever big sister could catch her.
“You little crow!” Clever called angrily. “You are to keep Jack with you!” He was their small brother who needed keeping.
Lively yelled, even as she ran, “Grandmamma will mind him.” That was the curious name they made for the Golden Bird. Crow was the name Clever used to scold her sister, for the little girl’s habit of picking up shiny things.
This story is a work in progress.
