The Author’s Kingdom is a series of articles, where the Author explains his perception of Heirs to the Kingdom. It is written to cover the festive season of Christmas 2016.
The Hidden Force behind HTTK.
There is far more to the Green Circle than meets the eye.
There is an aspect to this story that is not always as obvious as it should be, and to fully understand it, you have to take a trip back in time to none other than the Forest of Time.
Back in the dark past, this place was the first home of Eve and Hearne, and it is here that everything was created, including a tiny individual that was going to grow up running wild in the impressive forest, and getting into all kinds of mischief and learning far more than she should be doing so. I speak of that little wood nymph Opal.
It is very easy to understand where Runestone comes from, all you have to do is look to Leenard and Stephanie his daughter, for there you see the understanding and the wisdom Runestone inherited, but that poses the question, “How the hell do you explain Jade?”
There is no coincidence that Jade has a second name of Opal. From the moment she opened her bright green eyes and smiled, it was clear where the main influence of this child lay. In many ways when writing HTTK I deliberately wrote Jade as a younger version of Opal so that I could go some way to showing Opal as a young girl. It is at first hard to understand this older woman, who is filled with so much insight and wisdom and then compare her to Jade, but the simple fact is that they walk hand in hand as they are relatively the same kind of person. Jade does not fit in at Loxley and is gossiped about for most of the time she is there, this is due mainly to her wild and carefree personality, which everyone disapproves of. But if you travel back in time to the Forest of Time, you get to start to understand why, Jade is confined, and that is something she can never accept, once she is taken to meet Joe and start her training as a Woodsman, a door within her is unlocked that allows her true nature to break out, and it is that of a child born to roam and investigate the surroundings of everything. She is beyond doubt almost identical to Opal in her youth, and so the understanding of both of them deepens as we get a view of what Jade will be like in her extreme old age, and at the same time we see Opal the younger girl running wild through the trees and scrub.
During the setup of HTTK, The Forest of Time was set together to become the balance within the world. It is made up primarily of living things such as trees and flowers etc. As we all know, trees and plants spread, and so as the mighty forest expanded, so did the ability to bring life and balance it to all the other realms. This was my basic premise for the forest, and into that I placed Eve and Hearne. For them this is home, it is the centre of everything they are, and everything they will become, and when the time came to build a special place for Rhiannon to base herself on the Earth, it made sense to attach that realm to one of the most powerful realms of all. Eve and Hearne took the first realm they had built as an experiment, which was adjacent or overlapping into their home realm, and they gave it to the people of Fae of the Moon, it was renamed Avalon, and slowly Rhiannon sent down her workers to craft the realm to her desire.
This realm was a new realm that was initially an experiment for Eve and Hearne, and having created it, they then went onto to build many more realms, including the Woodland Realm, which would become the home to their children and some of their other creations. So we have two realms of massive importance that overlap, the Forest of Time and Avalon, the realm that was to be filled with Fae secrets, at this point, enter small wild child of the Green Circle, Opal.
Green Circle is nature personified in human form, something I think we have lost touch with in our modern life, being natural is exactly that, but in the modern world today it is regarded as shameful, and ironically referred to as “Unnatural.” If you look at the vast attributes of nature, you begin to understand Opal and the children she would bring into the world, and her grandchildren. For Opal it was normal and natural to run wild and naked through the Forest of Time, this was after all her playground, and clothing became a concept of the Human and Fae world. Like all of nature, there is a growing sense of almost inquisitiveness about it. Nature as we know creates many things and tries many different paths, and it watches to see what works and what fails, we call it evolution, but for nature it is just a normal natural thing, which probably goes a very long way to explaining the personality of Opal. Nothing really surprises her, everything is taken it her stride as she goes about her business, and her mind which is far keener than most realise, is always open and working at seeing everything.
Opal also feels everything deeply like Runestone does; even after her powers have decreased, she is still very aware of everything around her, it is almost a habit that she has done it for so long and so she naturally feels the need to watch and learn, and may I add at this point interfere. The Fae of Earth and Ofmoon hold many secrets that they guard with their life, but the problem there is if you are an inquisitive small wild child with the ability to become invisible, then nothing is truly a secret, especially if you happen to be based within what is to begin with, a realm that served as a playground for the Daughter of Life herself.
Opal is not like anyone you would meet easily, she is kind and accepting, and very friendly to all, but she is also a force of destruction more powerful than anything you will ever wish to meet. Never forget who her parents are, and as Eve explains she is the union of two very distinct powers, Opal was the first child born of two lines of power, which if you need further explanation read Book Six.
Opal has witnessed many things that have happened in the world since its very early days, she has run wild and experienced everything, she has eaten foods we will never encounter, picked flowers we have no names for, watched her father create new forms of life including the human race, and then watched her mother bring them to life. Opal has been included in the Ruling Council, which was created shortly before Rhiannon came to Avalon, and was actually one of the reasons she resided there. Out all she has done, the one thing she has done the most, is she allowed her inquisitive mind to get the better of her, and she went spying on the Fae. She walked their tunnels of Avalon unseen, and watched them in their woodlands and mountains as they crafted the realm, and she has watched and listened to things that if those doing it had known, they would have been very angry.
No one will ever truly know the extent of her observations, but in all of it she has grown very knowledgeable and filled with deep wisdom of all things, much of which she selflessly uses to aid Runestone and her family, something that is frowned upon by the White Lord Albanlin. Let’s be honest when it comes to the rules, Opal sees them more as simple guidelines, and works her own way between the rules bending them slightly to the advantage of others. It is the one aspect of her that really does annoy Albanlin, but she gets away with for no other reason than her mother is Albanlin’s sister, and she is after all his niece, and if the truth be told, he adores her, even if he is trying to keep the rules intact for the sake of keeping order.
One of the most important things that most people miss is the fact that Opal is an only child. Her mother was so busy in the affairs of the realms that before she had the chance to have another child, she lost her human form at the hands of a young Morgan. Eve was preoccupied and off guard when Morgan snuck up on her and took Eve’s human form, leaving Opal motherless and with no siblings, it is not something Opal has forgotten, and she hates Le Fey more than people will ever fully understand. Being alone for most of time means firstly she had a lot of time to learn and practice her skills, most of which she did in the Forest of Time. When the realm for the humans was made, she travelled into it and gained a massive amount of knowledge about its forms of life, she even played a small part with her father in selecting some of things that would be added to it. It was Opal who began to teach the humans the plant lore they needed to survive, and as a result with her help they flourished. Opal has been a huge part of the Woodland Realm since it was born, and that should never be underestimated, as she has seen the growth of everything.
Because of her isolation as a child, even though she was never lonely, when it came to family, which was late in life compared to others, she embraced them all and loved them, and again that should never be overlooked, Opal is fiercely protective of her family, and especially Runestone and Jade, and as we have seen she has always been in the background of her grandchildren, watching over them and helping them where needed, it is one of the reasons she chose to move as a guardian into the Hidden Realm to oversee the protection of the dream spirits. This role served two purposes, firstly she could maintain contact with Runestone, and it also allowed her to keep a watch over Morgan le Fey, because Opal was actually the only one that knew where Morgan was hiding long before the others were taken and held captive during the age of sleep. It is not mentioned, but I believe Albanlin knew that Opal allowed herself to be taken by Morgan, in order to get inside and work to free her father Hearne, although even to this day, he is not sure as he has never been able to pry it out of her.
The wisdom of age has shown a little bit of an irritable side of Opal, which does at times appear in Jade, especially in her opinion of fairies, whom Opal finds quite annoying as they guard their secrets, for which she well knows are not that secret, as she knows them all too from her spying days within the forest. Opal’s knowledge is vast, as we see through the simple things she does, as she has most of the abilities of her father and mother, and yet she has also acquired a few more. One of her stolen abilities being the Fae trick of being able to summon a fire to cook, this is a well-known White Circle secret, Opal takes it a little further by adding the food and the pan to cook it in. Her knowledge of plants helps her constantly with healing and also the ability to strengthen people, such as her famous pink liquid which will recover the body faster than anything else known to the Green or White Circles.
In a nut shell, Opal has a finger in every pie whether the owners know it or not, and she is possibly one of the most influential roles within HTTK. Not only does she guide Runestone and Jade, she educates Sapphire, aids the Sage, and gives good advice to her father. In her time she was a loyal and faithful friend to Gwendolyn, and has on many occasions provided aid to Rhiannon at Avalon and no doubt she will do the same for Amethyst.
Opal does not always get the credit she deserves, but I consider her one of the most important pieces behind the scenes, there is a still a part for her to play as the story comes to a conclusion, and always her interference will bring aid and rewards to all. So as you take the final leg of this journey, I hope you will see her in a brighter light and enjoy her rule bending and frustrations at the Fae, and laugh along as she weaves her own particular brand of magic from a circle out of sight, deep in the Hidden Realm.