Fey Lingerer

A fey lingerer is an eladrin that refuses to rest in death.

They mostly appear at night, under the moonlight, as dancing nymphs, in seclusive areas like glades, the tops of certain trees (maples, walnut trees), ponds, river sides, crossroads or abandoned fireplaces, dancing naked, with their breast almost covered by their disheveled hair, with bells to their ankles, and carrying candles. In almost all of these instances, the lingerers appear incorporeal. Rarely, they are dressed in chain mail coats.

The effect of their specific dance, the Hora, has similar characteristics with the dances of the unseelie. The place where they had danced would after remain carbonized, with the grass incapable of growing on the trodden ground, and with the leaves of the surrounding trees scorched. Later, when grass would finally grow, it would have a red or dark-green color, the animals would not eat it, but instead mushrooms would thrive on it. Lingerers don’t live a solitary life. They gather in groups in the air, they can fly with or without wings; they can travel with incredible speeds, either on their own, or with chariots made of fire.

Lingerers appear sometimes with bodies, other times only as immaterial spirits. They are young and beautiful, voluptuous immortals, their frenzy causing delirium to the watchers, and with bad tempers, but not being necessarily evil. They come in a group of unknown numbers, either in a group of seven, and sometimes in groups of three.

Lingerers are also believed by the eladrin to be agents of revenge, having the right to avenge in the name of their employers. When they were called upon to act, they hounded their victims into the middle of their dance, until they died in a furor of madness or torment.

To please the lingerers, the eladrin had dedicated to them festival days: the Rusaliile, the Stratul, the Sfredelul or Bulciul Rusaliilor, the nine days after the Easter, the Marina etc. Whomever doesn’t respect these holidays will suffer the revenge of the lingerers: men and women who work during these days would be lifted in spinning vertigos, people and cattle would suffer mysterious deaths or become paralyzed and crippled, hail would fall, flooding would happen, the trees would wither, and the houses would catch fire.

But the people also invented cures against lingerers, either preventive or exorcistic in nature: garlic and mugwort worn around the waist, in the bosom, or hung from the hat; or hanging the skull of a horse on a pole in front of the house. In this category, the most important cure is a ritual dance.

The Lingerer Queens


Catrina, Zalina and Marina were once sacred naiads known as the Iele.

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