Mamie Verde

A relic of the Potluck clan, Mamie is the oldest of the twelve and presently clings to life by a thin thread. The long years have rendered her soundless and unable to speak. She hardly ever opens her eyes, and appears unaware of her surroundings.

Even before the Potluck broke up twenty years ago, Mamie resorted to communicating with her caretaker Ratta in an ancient soundless language called Mindspeak. Presently, only the Lowlanders still use a form of this ancient language which involves eye movement. Folk from all the other lands use sound to speak. But for Mamie, even Mindspeak has dwindled to nothingness and Ratta is at a loss what to do. For the time being, she has wrapped the old woman in her Neverending Shawl, a magical cocoon that suspends Mamie between life and death.

Even back when the girls were young, Mamie was so decrepit that she had to lean on Ratta to shuffle about the Potluck dye shed. As the years passed, and the apprentices became known as the twelve, Ratta brought Mamie's favorite rocker to the workshop and fitted it with cart wheels to fashion a rolling chair. Mamie became completely dependent upon Ratta, who was once her kitchen maid but over time became her caretaker and constant companion. Mamie began to sleep more, eat less and speak her mind without words.

Mamie's solitary gift is that she is the Keeper of the Tales of Old. She alone knows all of the stories of the Ancient's Folly, imparted to her by the Guardian of the Crystal Caves. When Aubergine invited Mamie to live at the Potluck, the hope was that Mamie might impart the tales to the circle of twelve. And thus it was so. As the years passed at the Potluck, Mamie offered the yarns, one by one, choosing Sierra Blue as her successor to reveal them to the next set of Potluck acolytes, but because of her failing health, she was never able to finish before Tasman turned traitor and the magical circle of the Potluck was sundered. None but Ratta knows that Mamie was unable to tell the last and most important story, which is the Tale of the Guardian. This yarn reveals the whereabouts of the Crystal Caves which houses the graves of the Ancients and the source of the crystals. Before Mamie can summon the strength to utter the lost tale, words leave her forever and she can do naught but think it to Ratta in Mindspeak.

Crone like, Mamie has a hairy upper lip and when she does come out of her trance she mouths words in a soundless whisper. She has only wisps of white hair and weighs almost nothing. As she is constantly cold, Ratta clothes her in long house dresses and lap robes thrown over her chair.

What the others do not know is that Mamie does have a few words left to say before she passes from this world to the next. When she does utter a phrase, she will shock all with mystical truth she has no apparent way of knowing. Perhaps Mamie knows what happened to her friend Traces of Teal, who disappeared the night Tasman left. Perhaps she knows the how to thread through the maze of blind passages and dead end caverns to the Crystal Caves. It could be she can lead them to the Guardian before Tasman, known now as the Dark Queen quarries the crystals. Or it could be that the world will end in Fire this time, not Ice.