Huon

Creation

Huon was created by writer John Ney Rieber and artist Peter Snejbjerg in The Books of Magic issue 36, in 1997.

Major Story Arcs

When the faerie people were first created, they had no realm. Lucifer came to their lords, one of whom was Huon, and gave them the realm of Faerie if they would send seven of their people to Hell every seven years.The seven other lords of Faerie said yes right away, but Huon wasn’t sure and only said yes hesitantly. Lucifer took the other seven lords to Hell and left Huon as the first king of Faerie. Huon’s guilt destroyed him, and the guilt of fairy-kind left him out of their histories except for the kings and queens whose job it was to fulfill the Tiend.

As King, his eldest child is his daughter Mab; one of her descendants is Auberon. His eldest son is Haakon, whose descendants include Magnus, Obrey, Huonnor, and Amadan.

Huon is now eternal being who has no natural shape or face, and has to take on other identities to exist. He says “the only time I have is the time I make for myself…Other people have time without making it. They are just because they are…I don’t have anything unless I make it.” He looks like a little grey bald man.

He uses many aliases, such as Huon the Many, the Small, the None, the Blank, of Seemings.

He looks at a storage room of many small figures, and swallows one, becoming a tall elf with long hair and a robe.

He visits Tim Hunter, who is on a raft in a magical ocean surrounded by fog. He says it is his land, a land defined by uncertainty, but that they must go. He takes the key Tim wears around his neck and says that “we Openers and Levellers and the like” have no choices. Tim is an Opener; the Faerie realms are currently in a tizzy about the potential arrival of a Leveller. The implication is that Huon is the Leveller, but we learn later that that is not the case.

Huon uses the key to transport them to Faerie. He says it is time to begin the Levelling, which happens when a world’s appearance and reality become too disparate from each other.

Huon eats another small statue, and turns into a winged, fanged, angel-like being. He explains to Tim how Faerie got its beauty in a deal with Hell, and that their debt is called the Tiend.

The Hell Lords come to Faerie to collect the Tiend, but a fog envelops all of Faerie, and all of it disappears into mist. Huon says it was because the people of Faerie did not know who they really were or where they were.

Huon says they were not destroyed, but turned into pure potential, capable of becoming any new or old shape, or none. Only Julie the Dancing Bear still shares Tim and Huon’s space. The others are in spaces of their own, where they interrogate their selves about who they are.

Tim gets frustrated with Huon and says people figure out who they are through interaction with others, not by thinking on their own, and prepares to use his power as an Opener to release everyone.

However, he doesn’t have to, because Yarrow, a flitling who was once inspired by Molly, has decided what Faerie should be. She is the Leveller due to the strength of her belief.

Huon has by now taken on a form of a short skeleton with two swords. He says that Faerie is now what it should always have been, and no longer owes the Tiend.

Back in his own space and in his small grey man shape, Huon says he has now atoned for the sins of his past. However, he asks why he is still bound to this space; he knows which identity he must now choose and live that life, but wants to forget which one it is. He seems imprisoned in his ambiguity.

Long in the future, at the end of Faerie (again), the Hag of the Iron Well and Gyvv sit and watch a scrying pool. They see Huon as the first king of Faerie; he appears blue here instead of grey as he was in his memory. The pool shows how Huon’s grandson Magnus, who should have been great, had an affair with the Hag, but when they had a child, Amadan, he did not fully accept him, and Faerie started to go wrong.