Fawn
| Affiliation | The women of The Hollowed Shadow |
|---|---|
| Home | Varaar |
| Weapons | A bow |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Fawn is a woman of Varaar who was stolen from her family as a child and held as a dancer at the Hollowed Shadow, and who now runs a standing campaign against the city's gangs out of the club's burnt-out basement.[1][2] She is Tabitha Glowdish's partner in The Way Shadows Live and, in the narration of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened, "the woman she came to love many moons ago".[1][2]
Appearance
Fawn has bright pink hair, olive skin and blue eyes, and wears golden hoop earrings. Tab had never seen hair that colour on anyone before her.[1] Dancing at the Shadow she wore scanty silk and a white skirt that flared open like a blossoming flower when she leapt, and hid the bruises on her eye and cheek under a thin layer of powder that fooled the patrons and never fooled Tab.[1]
Years later she is gaunter, and the warmth in her blue eyes is dimmed but not gone.[2] Reagan Hideaway, seeing her for the first time on the second floor of the colosseum with an arrow nocked, knows her only as the hot-pink-haired woman.[3]
The books do not say what species Fawn is. Tab counts her an Eslurian, and calls her the first one who ever gave her a chance to be something other than just the Olphin.[1]
Personality
At the Shadow, Fawn kept up an act and kept Tab inside it. The two pretended to be strangers for their own safety, and she greeted Tab mid-dance without missing a beat, winked at the men around her table and giggled at them, well enough that Tab sometimes found her feigned interest in men more convincing than her love for her.[1] Told to come down off the table, she put a finger over her lips and smirked.[1]
She looks after other people before herself and says so plainly. She is described as the woman who would do just about anything for the ones she cared most about, and her own answer to being told she was being left for her safety was "Then don't leave me".[2][1]
The version of her that meets Reagan is direct to the point of bluntness. She opens on Tab with the accusation that she walked back in after all those years as though nobody would remember how she left, hears her out, crouches down as though to embrace her and slaps her instead, then asks a single practical question and picks up her bow.[2] She keeps needling afterwards, telling Tab she could benefit from taking a few notes on sappy chat.[4]
Background
Fawn was taken from her home as a young child by Burkhan, head of the Damaziko gang, who killed her family and imprisoned her in his club.[1] She was made to dance at the Shadow night after night, and Tab, asked who she was by a stranger at a card table and unable to give away that she knew her, answered only "That's Burkhan's personal piece".[1] Ayala, whom the dancers treated as a mother, and Hybie, a stoat who could not have been more than fourteen, were held there with her.[1]
She and Tab met at the Shadow. Tab had come in out of a storm after fighting off robbers, soaked through and aching, and collapsed at the table nearest the door. Fawn crouched beside her and spoke to her as though she did not have scales and fins, which Tab could not remember anyone doing without using the word vorath. She wet her scarf and dabbed the blood off Tab's forehead, then leaned back and said "My name's Fawn, by the way".[1]
Story
The Way Shadows Live
Burkhan announced that he would marry Fawn to strengthen his bloodline. Fawn pulled Tab into a curtained alcove, spoke into her ear quickly through heavy sobbing, and pressed a crumpled napkin of hastily written numbers into her hand before an orange lizard swept the curtain aside and took her away. It was on the ride home that the words and the numbers came together in Tab's head.[1]
Tab came back that night to cut Burkhan's throat. She reached Fawn first, and the argument over whether Fawn would leave with her drew the attention of Razaryn, the lizard, who threw Fawn to the floor and kicked her until her forehead split.[1] Tab broke his nose and his arm, put a knife in him, and carried Fawn out into the alleys.[1]
Fawn could not walk far. In the main plaza the crowd recognised Tab as an Olphin and parted around them, and a man and a woman took Fawn off her to sell to Burkhan. Tab got her back at knifepoint, paid the man two gold kaps to carry her to the mount, and rode her out of the canyon to a camp of ripped tarps in the desert.[1] There she numbed Fawn with grenspad, boiled a cactus needle and a strand of agave, and sewed the gash in her forehead shut.[1]
Fawn walked back to Varaar while Tab slept. A single trail of footprints led out of the camp toward the city. She was found wandering the streets and delivered to Burkhan, who took an eye out of his own doorman over the escape and ordered her cleaned and made ready in his suite.[1]
Tab killed Burkhan in the club below and set it alight. Ayala pulled her in through an upstairs window into the dancers' quarters, where Hybie was bandaging Fawn's head; the injury was a concussion, and Ayala's remark was that she was lucky it was only that this time.[1] Tab told Fawn she could not stay, that the gangs would come for anyone near her. Fawn, barely able to open her eyes, said "Then don't leave me", and was carried out through a hole in the wall onto the neighbouring roof by Tab while the Shadow burned.[1]
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Fawn does not appear in Book 1, but she is named in it, in two separate scenes. Aero Ellisvat, hearing Tab talk about getting rid of Reagan, asks whether Reagan is Fawn's replacement, and Reagan is left wondering who Fawn was and whether she had been Tab's lover.[5] Aero later tells Reagan that Tab let nobody really know her except Elmryn and perhaps Fawn.[6]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
The gangs never touched the ruin again. With no money and no way to make any, Fawn, Ayala and Hybie moved back into the burnt-out basement and claimed it, hung the plush walls with hand-drawn maps, tactical illustrations and portraits of women they mean to find, and set about stopping the gangs before they could take any more women. Fawn's account of how she knew about Tab's new companions is "We've got eyes in all corners of the city now".[2]
Tab came back to the Shadow years later to ask for help, because Aero and Reagan had been taken to the colosseum. Fawn heard the apology, slapped her, asked where they were, and sent for her bow.[2]
She took the second floor of the colosseum while Tab worked the crowd. The lead guard in the arena was reaching the end of a sentence when an arrow went into his shoulder and a second into his throat; a guard's response was "A bow? How did she get that in here?", and Fawn put an arrow into his kneecap. The gang head in orange stood up and pointed at her from his box. She picked off the rest of the guards in the way while the night hopper Aloeissa carried Reagan and Aero out through the gate.[3]
In the streets afterwards she introduced herself to Reagan with "Fawn, by the way" and a scowl at Tab, having guessed correctly that Tab had never mentioned her.[4] She led the party back to the Shadow through a blown-open window, sat Aero down at a table covered in weapons, and had Hybie fetch hot water and bandages.[4] She then told them to leave, because Zybersia is not the quickest trip and the sun would not wait. Tab stayed behind to get Fawn, Ayala and Hybie out of Varaar before the gangs came for them.[4]
Relationships
Tabitha Glowdish is her partner in the Collection and her ex-partner in Book 2. The pretence that they were strangers was a condition of both their safety, and Tab's leaving, which she meant to be temporary, lasted moons and cost her the relationship. Fawn's first assumption was that she had been left for a man.[1][2]
Burkhan stole her, killed her family, held her in his club and intended to marry her. She has no line to him in either book that is not spoken under his hand.[1]
Ayala and Hybie were held at the Shadow with her and live in it with her now. Ayala carried her out of the fire; Hybie kept the door unlocked every night for moons waiting for Tab to come back.[1][2]
Reagan Hideaway meets her only in Varaar. Fawn tells her that havarraks form very special bonds with those who help them, which is the closest anyone comes to explaining why Aloeissa remembered her.[4]
Behind the scenes
Fawn is listed in Book 2's pronunciation guide with no pronunciation printed beside her name, as the guide does for the plainly English names in it.[7] She is not in the Collection's guide at all, although The Way Shadows Live is her story: that guide covers Nupika, Burkhan, Hybie, Ayala, Razaryn, Muldah, Lahda and Kayloo, and neither Fawn nor Tab.[8] No surname is recorded, and neither is her species.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 Collection, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Book 2, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Book 2, Ch. 13.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 16.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ Book 2.
- ↑ Collection.