Any good book needs a good love interest, but Mavis is much more than that. Sure, she adds a delightful spark of romance and makes Doran’s heart thump a little faster whenever she’s near, but she is also resourceful, shrewd, and smart. Even with her unfortunate propensity for getting kidnapped, Doran and Errol are a lot better off with her—a fact she’ll likely remind them of often. Mavis experiences almost as much character development throughout Gift of the Tiding Bearer as Doran, so let’s take a look at her design, backstory, arc, and Jeremiah factor.
Design
Small, with soft features and a cascade of golden hair, Mavis receives attention anywhere she goes, either with her rare beauty or an outright demand for it. Her looks are more than vanity on my part, however, as they serve several purposes. For one, she comes from a region which values beauty more highly than any other culture, especially rare, and expensive beauty, and Mavis, being the daughter of a massively wealthy and prominent family in Firmgrasp, is both. Mavis’s attractiveness also makes her life all the smoother and more charmed, as most people will fall over themselves to please her. Her life has been as easy and lucky as Doran’s has been difficult and cursed. This difference in their lives is one of the many things that makes them clash when they first meet.
Any writer knows that if you’re going to make a character annoying, you’ve got to give her redeeming qualities which create balance and encourage the readers root for her. Mavis is stubborn, haughty, snobbish, and selfish, so she needs a lot of counterweights. One of those, and my personal favorite, is her love of geography, cultures, and travel. Before she met Dara and embarked on the Path, Mavis was kept under tight protection and rarely allowed to travel outside Firmgrasp. This only deepened her wanderlust and restlessness, and her devotion to studying about places she couldn’t visit in person proved indispensable on many occasions throughout her travels with Errol and Doran. Mavis would like me to say that her acting was a priceless addition as well, but we both know that Realgar is the only reason Mavis escaped those bandits. Speaking of which…
Backstory
Who would Mavis be without her valiant and devoted slave, Realgar? Her constant companion and guard since childhood, Mavis can’t remember a time before Realgar was by her side, or braiding her long hair in intricate patterns, or inventing new ways to entertain her. When I first created Realgar, he wasn’t meant to be a recurring character. I expected him to turn Mavis over to Doran, and that would be that, but boy, was I wrong. When Doran sauntered into Mavis’s life, igniting her imagination with ideas of travel and adventure, Realgar looked at me and frowned. His disapproval was unnerving and a little inconvenient. As he watched Doran and Mavis ride away, he gave me a look that left no uncertainty about his plans for what Mavis called a “vacation.” He had to follow them and that was that. I wasn’t going to argue with him—would you?
I don’t want to discuss too much more about Mavis’s family and childhood because Mavis will have the chance to tell you all about it herself in the upcoming sequel, Path of the Tiding Bearer. I’ll give you a couple fun facts to tide you over until the release of that book:
· Mavis has two older brothers, Otis, and Merit, who are both at least ten years older than her, allowing her to live much of her life as spoiled baby of the family and only child.
· Although Mavis loves acting and theater, her first love will always be painting. The estate in Firmgrasp is full of her artwork— on canvases, driftwood, dishes, furniture, walls… One afternoon when it had been pouring rain for days, she was bored sick and determined not to be consoled by anything. Realgar gave her his leather sheath to play with, since she’d often eyed it and liked to stroke the smooth material. When she gave it back, it was covered in the messy, half-dried paintings of a now-grinning seven-year-old. Realgar bought a new sheath but keeps the Mavis original tucked away in his trunk among his few and prized possessions.
· One of Mavis’s favorite summertime activities is camping with the other wealthy heirs of the coast. A far cry from canvas tents and the threat of bears, camping in Firmgrasp means taking a catamaran out to a collection of large wooden floating platforms, each with a richly constructed shelter of linen and silk, where the sunrise decorates with a new palate every morning. Mavis considers this one of the few places she felt really happy and content, if only for a few minutes at a time.
Arc
Although Mavis is undeniably selfish and unfeeling, she’s also quite sheltered. Learning what life has been like for Doran is an eye-opener which begins her journey to thinking of someone other than herself. But up until a significant point in the story, Mavis’s arc is no more than that—an isolated girl discovering the world outside her bubble. Gift of the Tiding Bearer is meant to be more than just a coming-of-age adventure story, so Mavis’s arc couldn’t end there. She needed a test, an opportunity that would promise all the adventure without the pain and difficulty of personal growth—a chance to have treasure, but not the Priceless Treasure.
The city of Doubleheart, famed for its theatrics and dramatic culture, was the perfect trial. Here, Mavis was offered the glory of an acting career, something she had dreamed of for years. With a handsome leading man and a theater full of applauding patrons, Mavis came very close to choosing “the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25). As often happens with temptation, Mavis reassured herself that the decision wouldn’t hurt her in the long run because she would only stay for the duration of Larimar’s play, and then carry on to the Priceless Treasure. But this lie is the most dangerous of all, the one to which Proverbs 14:12 refers when it says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” It is this decision which distinguishes Mavis’s whole journey, the choice that costs her everything and yet provides her with more worth than could possibly be measured.
Mavis still has a long way to go in understanding exactly what the cost of the Priceless Treasure will be, for though offered freely, the life of a Christian isn’t free of conflict or sacrifice. Stay tuned for book 2, where Mavis will be challenged to trust the Giver more than ever, and to surrender everything.
Jeremiah Factor
Mavis’s Jeremiah Factor, as I affectionately call the portion of Jeremiah 9:23-24 from which Mavis’s character is derived dictates a conversion from greed to generosity. The heart of her greed is really selfishness, and the root of generosity is selfless love. In order to overcome an all-too-common love of self, she needs to see the power of selfless love in action, which begins in Gift of the Tiding Bearer. But a strong Biblical principle is that empty spaces must be filled with something, and therefore Mavis cannot simply stop being selfish. Instead, selfishness must be replaced with love. This is a part of every Christian’s lifelong journey to a closer walk with Christ and a deeper understanding of His love. I can’t wait to explore that concept in the sequel, but for now it’s enough to say that to trust and emulate God’s love, we must know it more completely. And that is the most precious knowledge to be obtained on earth.
Sorry to have left you with so many plugs for the upcoming book. I promise I didn’t just write this article to build hype, but if that’s a side effect, I won’t complain. I hope you learned a few more things about Mavis of Firmgrasp and, more importantly, about the process God takes each of us through in our Christian walk. God bless until next time, when we visit the illustrious city of Spreadfeather and get better acquainted with our friend Errol.
