The Place
Vinehollow is a vine-tangled hill that rises 90 m out of the green country, its hollows wide enough to hold a party and its vines thick enough to keep a secret. The hill runs 3 km from the first hollow to the last, and the 3 km is the length of the revel the hill keeps. Its slopes are a tangle of vine and branch, and the tangle breaks where the wine has taken it, the wine lying in the hollows in an amber that glows faintly in the half-light of the hill. The air is thick with the smell of the wine and the pan-pipes, and the smell is where the hill keeps its one voice. A traveler who has been taken past the vine-wall says the hill is a party that has decided to outlive its guests, and the saying is the traveler's only word, because the hill does not end and the revel is all it does. This is the place where the party is the only honest conversation, and the conversation is the only thing the hill will keep.
How They Live
The Satyrs build their hollows in the vine, chambers of woven branch and hide lined with fur and moss, their entrances low and guarded by the vine-wall. Light comes from the amber shimmer of the wine, which glows faintly in the dark of the hollow, and from the revel-light, which is warm and is kept in the word. Food is the vine itself: the wine, the fruit, the small game, and the party that keeps the revel honest, the party-lines running across the mapped current from one hollow to the next. Water is drawn from the hill's springs, which the vine-queens tend like a garden, the springs lying in the roots of the hill in water that tastes of fruit and of the vine. The defense is the vine itself — a visitor who steps into the hollow is already in the path of the party, and the party is the alarm and the welcome and the sentence. The day is measured by the vine, which is also the calendar, because the hollow is the only clock the revel needs. The vine-queens mark the turn of the lean season by the last bloom of the vine, and the last bloom is the only calendar the hill gives, because the hill does not count and the revel is all it does. A guest who has been kept past the ending word says the hill holds the party the way the stone holds the wine, and the saying is the guest's only word.
People
Home of the Satyrs, whose hollows are counted by vine, and the vines keep some three hundred satyrs on the hill, three hundred being the most the wine can feed in a lean season. The vine-queens are the leaner females, with the shorter horns and the longer memory, who end every party with one word, and the ending is the only rank the satyrs have, for they have no king and the not-having is their only law. The revelers are the heavy males, their coat a thick wet brown with sea-black bands along the leg and a clean bone-white at the hoof-tip, and the bone-white is the satyr line's most persistent claim. The horns are curled and polished and always pointed at something, and the pointing is the satyr line's most persistent claim. A satyr who has not kept a party in a season is called "the one who forgot the hill," and the calling is the only punishment the hill gives, because the hill does not punish and the revel is all it does.
In Stories
The place where the party is the only honest conversation, and the conversation is the wine, and the wine is the word, and the word is the end. It was in the amber of the hollows that the satyrs first learned the weight of a word that ends a party, and the learning cost them the quiet and gave them the revel. The hill has kept the party ever since, and the keeping is the hill's way of holding the word honest.