Through the Orchard

In one corner of the garden, two rust and bleached wood benches turn in to face a crumbling, bubbling fountain. The flowers grow about them, and clamber slowly upwards over the dusty, sun-red bricks, but in the wall there is a doorway, and beyond the doorway is the dark.

As your eyes focus slowly in the musty, dust-strewn gloom, you could, if you looked closely, see the door that's holding back the soft and echoed sound of falling water just before you, but no doubt your attention would be easily draw up over the brick-laced stairs and into the hazy light of springtime beyond, where the breeze that lingers cool and fresh smells sweet with blossom, fruit and ripened grass.

Should you walk up and into the orchard, the air is full of evening, and the sky is full of dusk. The trees are full of blossom, and the pale moon hares gallop through the grass.

Keep walking, dreamer. Nearly there.

Keep walking through the orchard and past its centre where a cherry tree grows rich and red as plums, decked out in the pale pink of blossom. It grows grander and far taller than its cousins all around it. Walk past the low, iron rail fence that circles it. Keep walking.

On the outskirts of the orchard, there are wide and shallow, pale steps where grass has grown between the slabs. On climbing them, you find that on one side of you is a white marble rotunda, a temple wrought in pillared stone, billowing white muslin and wreaths of laurel leaves, that sings so softly with the sound of distant seas. Its beauty is endearing, but it cannot hold you for too long, for on the other side of you there is a tree that hangs its hands protectively over the velvet grass beneath it, its branches strung with lights that glimmer in the twilight.

There are two figures stretched out there beneath it against the grass and eastern silks. You know me well enough for recognition to be easy, but the other there is, thus far at least, a stranger to you. He is dark haired and with the deepest and most brooding eyes. As handsome as a wild stag. A pale silk shirt gathers hungrily about his throat, and wrists, and waist, and riding boots reach over blackened breeches. There is something in his aura, something in his very essence that seems to make the air itself quiver though with thunder, that seems to make your knees turn weak. There is something there that makes every breath of air around him shiver apprehensively with passion, power, and anticipation.

This is my Oberon...

...And I am telling him about Selene.

“This mortal girl,” he says, his voice like raw silk on skin as he strokes my hair the way a mortal man may stroke a favourite pet. “Knows more than most, I'll give you, but she is no danger to your life, my girl.”

He turns his head towards me. His breath against my skin. A mere whisper. I shudder close against him.

“She is so little more than a child playing with the dark,” he tells me. “Making shadows with her hands. You were quite correct not to recoil from her. You must react with strength. It's true that you must follow what she says, but, my girl, you will soon learn the faerie's craft of the creative interpretation of whatever she may tell you.”

A soft sound something like a laugh catches in his throat.

I smile into his shoulder.

“Now sleep,” he tells me.

And I do.

On the Night of the Full Moon

In the meadow beneath the wheeling stars, Eshin sleeps before the camp-fire that cracks and flutters in the fragrant, singing moonlight – filled with nightjars and wild flowers and whispering trees, all cast in tinted silver. The warm light of the fire turns his skin to glowing amber and his hair to fronds of golden bracken painted in an autumn sunset. There is a peace in him that stills and awes the mind, but I cannot sleep beside him...

... My mind too occupied elsewhere...

And so I rise from the seeding grass and heady flowers, and I walk into the night. I pass into the meadow...

... And out of all remembering...

... And into the velvet woods, rapt in the eerie moonlight and carpeted with daffodils and the silver-violet, starlit bluebells. The pollen hangs like anticipation in the cool air of nighttime: fragrant and intoxicating, calling me away from worry, away from bitter heartache and to the tender comfort of the waxen embrace of darkness. The grass and flowers are rich as velvet between my toes, and the nightingales are the forest's siren song...

... I pass deeper beneath the lazy, groping fingers of the trees where phantoms drift and mist creeps tentatively between the heads of blowsy bluebells...

A clearing. The grass grown long and wild, unkempt and untempered by the interfering hand of man but for the sky-washed, dusty purple of the altar stone, half-eaten by the grasses at the centre of the clearing, and reflecting back the hungry light of an already swollen moon.

Something moves me with all the deliberacy of a puppeteer. I am heavy and tired by the starlight. I stretch out against the altar... And I sleep.

I am woken by the gentle pressure of hushed voices like the ocean on my ears. I rise as the dreamer must surely rise from sleep, to see a face above me. She is far older than I believe I ever was, with raven hair and a raven's dress. She is crowned by the crescent moon. She smiles. There are others gathered near her, like shadows trying unsuccessfully to conceal themselves in darkness. I hear them. I feel them. I feel the pressure of their minds...

“I am in the Waking World,” I say, before I have chance to find my faerie voice, the voice that says: 'I am above you. I do not concern myself with mere statements, child. What I speak is my demand and you shall obey me, mortal!' I shall regret not finding that voice then, I know it too well even now.

“Yes,” she says, this woman, this moon-crowned, raven queen. “Tell me your name, faerie.”

I am compelled to answer.

“I am the lady Rosalie,” I tell her before I am indignant: “Now tell me, dreamer, what is yours?”

“I am Selene,” she tells me. “And you will do my bidding one year and one day from this silver-sculpted night... Although perhaps we may also become friends with time.”

“Selene,” I say to her, smiling to find my faerie voice at last. “It is not I shall do your bidding, but you yourself, and what is more you shall do mine besides... Although perhaps we may also become friends, with time.”

She smiles back. She does not seem concerned, but then... neither am I.

On Dyscrasia

I suppose that really it is only fair to stop playing at least one of my little games with you and offer up some sort of explanation as to what, exactly, may just be going on. Let me say first, however, that expecting any sort of consistency out of myself or anybody else that wanders in the World Between is foolish to the point of making you every bit as mad as we are. We faeries are not too fond of honesty, and even when we can bring ourselves to tell the truth, we prefer to make an enigma of our words – allowing a degree of imagination and forcing an amount of concious thought upon our readers. The same is true of me as is well true for the rest of faeriekind, maybe even a little less than most.

However, I do feel that the matter of Dyscrasia at least requires a few words to explain it, for it is something that you shall no doubt encounter often in the reading of my tales. As I am sure you are already aware of the nature of those like Eshin (who exists without me) and the Shadow Girl (who exists within) who are both a part of me, but not exactly myself either, then the nature of Dyscrasia should be an easy one to grasp. After all, you mortal men have had the knowledge of the four humours: Sanguine; Melancholic; Choleric; and Phlegmatic, for several thousand years. Although the knowledge has long since been dismissed as mere alchemy (and, while I know well someone that would argue for the cause of such medical, magical science, he shall have to wait for now), once everyone knew well what happens when the balance of those humours was disrupted in what was called 'Dyscrasia': Sanguinity would bring on a wild passion, coloured cheeks, high fever and good humour; Melancholia brought on a depression of the spirit and darkness of the soul; Cholera would bring sharp temper and an excess of energy and strength; and Phlegmatia would make the sufferer turn shy and cold and logical. Now, while that knowledge has long passed into heresy and folklore for your kind, for mine it is still very much alive. Indeed, we could not deny it even if we wished, for we are fickle creatures existing in a constant state of flux, and our humours are no different. So, while it is true that for the most part we exist in some sort of equilibrium, there are those times when all balance is disrupted.

This disruption brings about a sudden change of character which leaves us so utterly transformed in thought and in appearance that even our dear friends may well not recognise us until the balance reasserts itself. And so it is that every faery you shall ever meet has five very different faces: One that exists from an disequilibrium in each of the four humours; and one that is a combination of them all the the closest we may ever come to a normal, stable state. However, far from being fearful of the change of seeing it as some kind of sickness as your mortal children would, we faeries revel in it. It is yet another part of living, and therefore we exist to take some pleasure from it. And so, when the first shiver of Dyscrasia appears, we rush to find our clothing chests and play dress up like children with ourselves and with our minds. What fun! And, after all, no matter what goes on, it never lasts more than a day or two...