There’s many a Welsh tale that an Arthurian knight sleeps deep within this pregnant hill I chose to retire upon. That come the appointed hour he’ll rise to answer the nation’s clarion call for aid. Complete nonsense – I’ve phased through and checked the truth of it for myself: it’s sodden dirt through and through.
But these Cornish tales serve my own ends. True or not, I enjoy steeping myself in lore. In the immersion, the entanglement of my own foreign ways with the confused mythos of these lands.
And of course should I be caught unawares, I appreciate too the plausible cover it provides me. For you see, I am a jinn and this hill is my chosen home.
And as such, its people fall under my protection – I’ve no legal or religious obligation toward them, mind you. No, my duty is a moral choice. One that I’ve extended to my human neighbours personally.
My home, built brick by brick by my own hand, is a cube of three floors, and on each floor three by three rooms. There are no windows, doors or stairs inside: for I ask you, of what use are those to we jinn?
The rooms each hold their own rotating gravities in accordance to a logic that human minds could never comprehend, and rotate about one another like a jinni hand puzzle you might be familiar with. When I slumber within my home I inhabit all nine spaces within, simultaneously using all nine as one and the nine at once separately.
I only tell you all this so you understand the world of difference between my kind and your own.
From the outside, my home on a hill looks like any nondescript human home you might half-remember. Glamoured as to not entice curiosity or exploration, and tailored to be near-invisible to an individual’s memory, each person sees a uniquely dull thing each time they chance to look upon it. The hill is common ground, so many do.
I walk into the town in human form, on the hunt for a new woman to satisfy my appetites. It’s the only payment I demand for the services the locals are unaware they benefit from. I first purchase my trinkets and amusements then quickly find a petite earthly thing with hair in ringlets of spun gold. I spot too a bosomed maiden of raven-hair. I will have both tonight.
I stare intently at them, knowing they feel the heat of my eyes. Once they turn to face me, the deed’s as good as done. They’re prey paralysed, can only see visions in their mind of the pleasures and perversities to come.
I speak to them in old Brythonic tongue but the words incanted are mere formality. They don’t understand the symbols I speak, not consciously, but the strong Bretton blood in them stirs under the surface. Bubbles. It recalls older transgressions, recognises this for the violation of ancient covenants that it is. Tonight our fornications will spawn nephilim of the new age.
In my short time in this land I have seeded many women this way. In the morning they’ll wake in their own beds, bellies full with abomination and hearts with gratitude. No mortal men will ever be enough for them after such a night. I conquer wholly and forever their bodies, hearts and souls before moving onto new fertile lands.
My children – these nephilim – will live long fruitful lives like their father. Endowed with inhuman abilities and jinni appetites. They will enjoy mortal visages and inherit their mothers’ love for these lands. And between great acts of renown will they slumber deep in many pregnant hills.
In such a way have I mixed my heritage with that of this nation, granting truth to their fanciful tales.
abdulj. 