Cobweb: faerie maid of Queen Titania

Cobweb of the Goodfellows was a faerie of Avalon, one of the male maids of Queen Titania and a companion of the band of tricksters who ran with Robin of the Goodfellows, the faerie who would one day be known across the Nine Realms as Mimir. Cobweb himself never left the lands of the Fae, and no god or mortal of the North ever laid eyes on him. His name crossed into the Norse world only through memory, when Mimir, wandering the shifting halls of Valhalla at the side of Kratos, was made to relive his years in the forest court of King Oberon and spoke aloud of the friends he had left behind.

A faerie of the Goodfellows#

Cobweb belonged to the Fae, the supernatural folk whose homeland lay in Fairyland, a domain apart from the world of humans, and he was counted among the known residents of Avalon in the Celtic Lands alongside Oberon, Titania, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, and Moth. It was a place where magic moved through every dealing of its people, and the faeries of the royal household stirred as much trouble as they soothed.

Within that household Cobweb ran with the Goodfellows, the crew of faerie folk that gathered around Robin Goodfellow, also called Puck, the quick tongued servant of King Oberon who would in a later age carry the name Mimir. By Mimir's own account the Goodfellows got into all manner of nonsense together, playing cruel tricks on unsuspecting mortals for the amusement of themselves and their king. Among these companions Cobweb stood closest to Puck, and Mimir would remember him as one of his dearest faerie friends from the years before he abandoned the Fae altogether.

The queen's male maid#

For all his mischief, Cobweb held a post of trust in the court, serving Queen Titania as one of her male maids together with Mustardseed, Moth, and Peaseblossom. The four worked for the comfort of their queen in all things. Their duties ranged from dewing her orbs upon the green to standing watch over her rest, and when Titania lay down to sleep the four sang a lullaby over her, charged with keeping every unpleasantness away from her bower, the spotted snakes, the spiders, and the beetles that might trouble a sleeping queen. Their protection had its limits, for while the faeries busied themselves against insects and small crawling beasts, Oberon was known to call far larger animals toward his wife's bower, leopards and boars and bears, one move among many in the long quarrel between the two rulers.

That quarrel shaped the court Cobweb served. Titania had forsworn the bed and company of her husband, and each ruler accused the other of infidelities, so that the marriage of the king and queen of the faeries was itself a love that did not run smoothly. The faeries of the household spoke of the discord openly, and even the work Puck did for Oberon was measured against the rift between their master and mistress.

The enchantment of Titania#

The feud came to a head when Oberon resolved to humiliate his queen. On the king's orders, Puck anointed the sleeping Titania with the juice of a magic flower whose power bent the affections of any who felt it, so that she would fall in love with something preposterous upon waking. The charm worked exactly as Oberon intended. Titania opened her eyes upon the weaver Bottom, a mortal wearing the head of an ass, and loved him on sight.

Besotted, the queen appointed her four faeries, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, to wait upon the needs of her new lover. Bottom took their service in the plainest way imaginable. Where Titania spoke to him in graceful language full of dewberries, painted butterflies, and moonbeams, the weaver simply matched each faerie to the task its name suggested, treating Mustardseed as no more than a spice for his beef, and marking Cobweb as a useful acquaintance should he ever cut his finger, since cobwebs served to stanch minor bleeding. His coarse speech wore on the poetic queen, who bade her faeries tie up her lover's tongue and bring him to her bower, and she offered him besides the soothing music her attendants could provide. Cobweb and his fellows served the ass headed mortal for as long as the flower's magic held, until the charm was undone and the queen was released from her absurd devotion.

Remembered in Valhalla#

Cobweb's history after those days went unrecorded. Puck, grown weary of Oberon's fickle favor and fearing what the king's boredom might bring, fled the domain of the Fae and made his long way into the Nine Realms, where he took the name Mimir, served Odin, and was in time freed from imprisonment by Kratos and Atreus. Whether Cobweb remained in Titania's service, and what became of the Goodfellows without their Robin, no chronicle of the Nine Realms could say.

Yet Cobweb was not wholly forgotten. When Mimir accompanied Kratos into Valhalla, the halls parted him from the Spartan and set him walking through his own past, and among the memories the place forced upon him were his years living in the forest in the service of King Oberon, alongside his crew of faerie folk such as Cobweb and Mustardseed. Prompted by what the halls had shown him, Mimir told Kratos of his misadventures from the days when he answered to Puck and Robin of the Goodfellows, of the nonsense the crew had gotten into and the cruel tricks they had played on unsuspecting mortals. It was the only time Cobweb's name was ever spoken in the Norse lands, a small faerie of Avalon surviving in the memory of the smartest man alive.