The Rest of Roman's World

Roman has his Fireside. The defenders have their pages, Tilda has her nest, and the Unseen has his fog. But a world is bigger than its heroes — so here are the others a reader actually remembers: a keeper under the water, the boy in the stable, the keeper the woods let go, and the trader of forgotten things. Rowan & Alex — the two voices of the podcast — present them, the way they present everything: one of them looking in from outside, one of them looking out from inside.

Corvin

Keeper of the Drowned Throne · Book Two

Roman is not the only keeper in the world. Under the water, in a hall where the fish bring the news — terrible gossips, the fish — sits Corvin: an old man with a driftwood face, deep-water eyes, grey hair like riverweed, a belt of shells, and a coat that was once blue.

He was a diver once. He found the stair down to the Drowned Throne on a dare, and stayed for a promise — and he has been staying ever since, making tea, serving broth out of the largest shells with the ceremony of a king, and calling Roman brother keeper.

“The waiting is the keeping. The chair doesn't make the keeper, brother. The staying does.”— Corvin, on what a keeper is

Pip

The stable-hand · Book One

It took twenty minutes to get Pip talking — and most of that was Jack making a fool of himself trying to feed a carrot to a horse. Pip is the stable-hand boy of Mallow, Jack and Alice's own age, quiet until you earn him, and the one who knows the things the horses know.

He learned the old shepherd's path from the horses themselves, and when the strangeness came to Mallow it was Pip's knowledge that the children needed. The story does not forget a friend like that.

“…a seat saved at every feast.”— what the story promises Pip, and keeps

Maren

Keeper of the Whispering Woods, before · Book One

Before the children ever reached the Empty Throne, someone was keeping the woods around it. Maren — silver-white hair braided with small blue flowers, amber eyes, a wooden staff carved with glowing symbols — kept the Whispering Woods for longer than anyone can say, while the throne itself sat unclaimed for a hundred years, waiting.

Then two children and a very brave dog solved the puzzle of the stones, and Maren did the hardest thing a keeper can do: she handed it over. Her wooden wolf carving, on its leather cord, went to Jack — the woods' keeping, passed on.

“I kept the woods until three weeks ago, when you came. The throne chooses its keeper, you see.”— Maren, giving up the keeping

Marta

Trader in Forgotten Things · Book One

Somewhere in the dusk valley stands a wooden cart painted with four words: FORGOTTEN THINGS — bought & sold. Marta keeps it — silver hair in a long braid, a dusk-coloured shawl, and eyes nobody has ever managed to read. Her stock is like nothing else in the world: a music box with no tune, a sealed letter addressed To Someone Who Will Know, a brass key green with age.

She gave Alice a brass bell with no clapper, and she has a way of already being somewhere she had no time to travel to. Wherever she has been, the grass stays pressed in a circle. Nobody asks Marta her prices twice.

“Everything here costs exactly what you can't quite spare. Warm means waited-for. And a door that's opened can't be unopened.”— Marta's rules of trade

A world keeps growing the way a story does — one true character at a time. When the next one steps out of the trees with a name and a story of their own, Rowan & Alex will present them here too. Until then, the rest of the company is on the Kept Things page, each with a place of their own.