Eva Chapman is a Kubera.
Overview[]
Young John Chapman had strange and powerful dreams, visions of an America covered with apple trees, a land in which no one ever went hungry. He'd sit and stare at the trees his ancestors had planted, fruit trees born in distant England, and he'd ponder how to make his fantasy reality. One day he had the answer: He picked up his Bible, shouldered a bag of seeds he'd bought at the cider mill, and walked out his front door into a legend. John Chapman spent 50 years wandering Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, planting apple trees and preaching good will to all he met. When he died in 1845, his friends knew which of his names to place first on his tombstone: "Johnny Appleseed."
Dreamers that powerful are rare and precious, and the fae guard them all the more closely. John's protector had been watching him since birth, but then she had no other choice: She was a kubera, and the Chapman family orchard contained her Anchor. The young boy's Glamour woke her up, sent shocks running through her tangled roots. His dreams helped her withstand the Banality of mortal life in a small New England town, but they also disturbed her. She couldn't put her branches on it, but she sensed that the visions haunting John had their origin elsewhere. Someone (or something) was sending the child a message or perhaps even a set of instructions.
When John set out on his dream-compelled journey years later, the kubera made arrangements to follow him. She kept him safe from the dangers of the frontier; her Arts insured that no wild animal ever harmed John, that the Indians and settlers he encountered met him with peaceful spirits. She took the seedlings he planted and set them to growing straight. After John passed away, she discovered that she could use any one of his hundreds of apple trees as an Anchor. His dream was stronger than death, and she was caught up in it.
Today she goes by the name of Eva Chapman, watching over not only John's trees, but those of others as well. Eva uses her network of multiple Anchors to travel and to promote the creation of urban green spaces. In many ways, her waking existence is a continuation of John's work. She has not forgotten the problem of his dreams' mysterious source, receiving her biggest clue in 1969. The wave of Arcadian Glamour accompanying the returning Sidhe certainly felt like what she had sensed almost two centuries earlier. When she heard that Queen Mab had reestablished the Kingdom of Apples and that is southern border roughly corresponded to the area of John's travels, she began to get suspicious. In Welsh, ynys yr Afallon means "island of apples," and Eva intends to find out just what Avalon has to do with Johnny Appleseed.
References[]
- CTD: Inanimae: The Secret Way, p. 97-98