Sable

Sable is a fictional character from Clare B. Dunkle's fantasy series, The Hollow Kingdom. She is introduced as one of the elves Seylin finds in Close Kin and she also appears in the third novel, In the Coils of the Snake. Through the series, Sable is engaged to Thorn, ends up marrying Tinsel, and is the mother of three goblins.

Character history
During the elf harrowing, Sable's ancestors, Lord Sabul of the Top Shield Star Camp, guided his people out of the elf King's forest to escape the attacking goblins. They end up reestablishing a camp close by, but out of the goblin's reach. As the generations go by, the band becomes less and less civilized without their King and without the knowledge of their people. Due to an accident, the older women of the camp die, taking the female magical knowledge with them, meaning that the band no longer has the power to save women from death during childbirth. The elves that come later are taught that women dying during childbirth is just a fact of life that has to be accepted. The first wife of Sable's father dies while giving birth to their stillborn child, so he has to marry an elf commoner to continue his line. They have Sable. Growing up, she witnesses elf women dying when they have babies. Seeing her best friend, Laurel, die that way, convinces Sable that this will not happen to her. Though she loves her fiance, Thorn, she refuses to marry him and die while having their child. To prevent the wedding, she disfigures herself on marriage moon. Afterward, Thorn hates her and verbally abuses her. He orders everyone in camp to refer to her as the ugly woman and throws her food on the ground. He also throws her out of the camp whenever she wakes them up at night with her nightmares. Over the years, she accepts this treatment and finds it preferable to dying in childbirth and ending up in the goblin caves.

When Seylin, a goblin man who looks like an elf, joins the band, Sable is immediately suspicious of him because he has fine clothing and knows spells that her band has never heard of before. She gets the idea that he came from a prosperous camp that was attacked by goblins and urges him to leave so the same won't happen to her camp. Seylin tries to help the band and defends Sable when Thorn throws her out, but his help is unwanted. When the men go out for flour and supplies, Thorn brings back a mirror and shows Sable what she looks like with her deformaties and teases her about them. This leads Seylin to decide to leave their camp. Before he goes, Emily finds him and they reunite. As he plans to leave, one of the elves, Willow, hits Seylin with a stick and the goblins who followed him approach the elf band. They put the men to sleep and take the women, Sable and Irina. Thaydar plans to marry Irina and Tinsel plans to marry Sable. On the way to the goblin caves, Tinsel heals Sable's scars and tries to convince her that childbirth doesn't always end in the death of the mother. She doesn't believe him and tries to escape. When he catches her, he decides that he can't marry her and will tell Marak Sixfinger when they return. Sable realizes that with her scars healed, Thorn will want to marry her again and decides that she would rather marry Tinsel.

The elf brides arrive at the goblin kingdom and Marak speaks to them individually. He proves to Sable that childbirth doesn't always end in death and marries the elves to their goblin husbands. During her time in the kingdom, Marak arragnes for her and Irina to learn elvish, goblin, weaving, elf math, and other essentials. Though her magic is for healing, she is too traumatized by all the death she grew up with to work with the sick. She instead helps builders, using her new passion for math. Sable also becomes close friends with Kate Winslow, the goblin King's Wife, who she takes classes with. She and Tinsel have three children together. Two of them are shown in the series, Tattoo and Fay. She also has a granddaughter name Trina, who is Fay's daughter.

During In the Coils of the Snake, Sable befriends Miranda Richardson, a human girl raised to be Marak Catspaw's wife. While they are spending time together, Sable tells the girl about her experiences with elf men and says they are all evil. After Miranda is kidnapped by the elf lord, Nir, Catspaw sends Sable into the elf camp to get information out of her. During her two visits, she tries to convince Miranda to escape, but she refuses because she has fallen in love with Nir. Sable tells her that elf men don't marry human women because they can't have children together and that Nir is just waiting until Miranda is 18 so he can throw her out of his tent. This hurts her, but Miranda stays in the camp anyway. When Nir finds out that Sable was visiting his prisoner, he confronts her the next time she comes to the camp and demands to know what she told Miranda. Sable tells him and he banishes her from the camp, telling her never to let him see her again and ordering her to deliver a warning to the goblin King about the spies. When she tells Catspaw the warning, she falls down dead. The goblins try to keep her alive by magic while looking for a counterspell to save her and Catspaw goes to get revenge on Nir. When he finds out the elf lord is gone, he uses that to get Miranda back and plans to kill him when he returns. Using information he got from Miranda, Seylin discovers that Nir is really the elf King, which is why he can marry the human Miranda and he has a strong effect on elves who will obey him no matter what. Nir heals Sable by telling her to come back and they apologize to each other.

Physical appearance
Sable has "long hair that was blacker than the night" and dark blue eyes. At the start of Close Kin, Sable takes a knife and cuts off pieces of her skin on both of her cheeks, leaving mangled scarred flesh there. "Her cheeks were covered by twisted masses of scar tissue. The smooth, perfect skin abruptly became silvery, pink, and white, in mottled, tangled bands across the sides of her face. The scar tissue tuggled up one corner of her lip so that she always appeared to be smiling". When Tinsel heals the scars, her skin is smooth except for thin silver lines on her cheeks.

Magical ability
Though she grows up believing women can't perform magic, she learns she is powerfully magical once she goes to the goblin kingdom. Marak tests her and reveals she is about as powerful as Seylin. Her magic is moderately geared in healing. As a result, she is overly sensitive when others are in need of medical attention and she can't help them. Though her magic is geared toward healing, her experiences witnessing death and childbirth have scarred her too much to become a healer. Her magic is much more invested in mathmatics which she uses to help the dwarves with building projects.