Chapter 10

Mandy awoke to a clink and clatter beyond the curtains of her bed. She had slept so heavily that for a moment she didn’t remember where she was. Then she stuck her head out to a slap of cold air and the sight of Ivy building a fire in the hearth.

“Good morning.” Maybe it was the cold air or the amazing sight of the snow beyond the window, but her grogginess passed at once.

“Oh, hi. I’m sorry, I was trying to keep quiet.”

“I don’t mind. What time is it?” The sky beyond the windows was gray, saying only that the clouds were low and dawn had not yet come.

“Onto six. You’ve another twenty minutes before the bell.” She put a bundle on the chair. “Here are clothes.”

Ivy’s voice was warm, and her eyes when they met Mandy’s were full of friendship. Yesterday the girl had seemed so reserved—and so mean, creating the trouble with the Hobbes edition and all. She had certainly had a change of mood. Mandy remained angry with her over the business with the book. It wasn’t unreasonable, she thought, to want an apology. Ivy cheerfully poked up the fire.

When it blazed she stepped to the center of the room, hands on hips. “How’s your pot?”

“My—oh, I used it, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean,” Ivy said. She reached under the bed, hauled it out, and glided away with the big blue porcelain pot cradled in her arms. “Breakfast in the kitchen at 6:30,” she called over her shoulder. A moment later Mandy heard her tell Constance that “the lady” was up. How old was Ivy? Seventeen, perhaps. Certainly she was too old to be calling twenty-three-year-old Mandy a “lady.”

It took no small amount of courage to step naked into the freezing-cold room. A curtained bed, she had found, was a most delicious luxury. Maybe the style had been abandoned because it was simply too comfortable. She dashed over to the chair and opened the bundle, finding a bra and panties, and some of the homespun that the others wore, what seemed a shapeless dress that, when she wore it, clung most beautifully.

The cloth was so cold against her skin it made her hop and gasp.

She had just tied the belt when she heard a meow at the window. There stood Tom, pressing against the glass, looking annoyed to be out in the snow.

Down at the village he had seemed dangerous. But now he was a cold old cat, and she couldn’t resist letting him in. When she raised the sash, the burst of freezing air that engulfed her made her squeal.

“Come in here, you! Hurry up!”

The cat rushed past her and in an instant was curled up in front of the fireplace.

“You’re a weird one, kitty-cat. How’d you get out here in the first place? Did you follow me?”

The cat stared at her. She wanted to stroke him but thought better of it.

“If you ever want a kiss,” she said softly, “you know who loves you.” She puckered up and went “mmmmm,” but the cool seriousness of the cat’s gaze silenced her.

This was unexpected. Could an animal see into a human sou!?

Nervously she returned to her preparations. She had to break the ice on her pitcher to wash. The soap was homemade and smelled powerfully of peppermint. It smelled, as a matter of fact, very much like Constance Collier, like Ivy, like Robin. It smelled like this house. And it wasn’t only mint, was it? There was in it a hint of some more exotic herb.

After her wash she dragged on her muddy shoes and wished she had some heavier ones, and also a good jacket or sweater.

And she wished Tom would stop that staring! Could there be laughter in a cat’s eyes? Either he loved her or he disdained her. Or worse, both. Even though she was dressed, she still felt naked.

It took the faint tapping of flakes at her window to draw her mind away from him. October 19 and already it was snowing. If such weather held, this was going to be a long, cold winter. She peered through the hazy glass. What magic she saw, me world transformed to philosophical purity, silent but for the hiss of snow against snow and the rattling of bare limbs.

As the sky lightened she saw that the snow had touched me autumn colors of the trees with white. The perfection of the colors together, the pillowy razor of white, the staring reds, the oranges and browns, went to the center of her, for the scene the snow had created was truly a wonder of nature.

When Constance came along, swathed in a huge woolen robe, nothing but a face in the dark folds, Mandy was still motionless before the window. “I know,” Constance said, touching her shoulder with long, light ringers. “You’ll need the clothes we got you. Why didn’t Ivy—” She went to the door. “Ivy?”

Louder: “Ivy!”

From downstairs: “I’m in the kitchen, Connie.”

“We need Amanda’s warm things. She’s practically naked, the poor girl.” She turned around. “Ivy’s quite new to big-house responsibilities. But she has a good heart. A very good heart.”

Her footsteps sounded on the stairs. A few moments later she appeared with another stack of clothes topped by a pair of stout hiking boots. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I completely forgot the rest—the important stuff, too. I think it’s too cold for me today.” She looked down at Mandy’s feet. “What’s your shoe size?”

“Seven and a half.”

“Hiking boots have to be a little bigger to make room for the socks. I think I guessed right, though.”

“I’m glad you thought of them at all.”

“You need good shoes. You must learn every inch of this estate as if it were your own,” Constance said.

There was a beautiful hand-knit wool sweater of rich, iridescent brown, and beneath it something huge and dark and gray. Mandy put on the sweater and unfolded the mysterious garment.

It was a hooded, ankle-length cloak made of the tightest homespun she had ever seen. Down the front were monogrammed a five-pointed star, a triangle, a sickle moon, and two other, more obscure symbols.

It was tied about the neck with a red silk ribbon.

“This is wonderful.”

“You like it?”

She swept it across her shoulders and tied the ribbon. Ivy raised the hood. The cloak was heavy and warm and altogether magnificent. “Oh, Constance, I love it. Really love it!”

“It took half a year to make. The weavers started in April, We made it just for you.”

Mandy looked at her. What she had just said didn’t make sense.

“I’ve been watching you ever since you were a girl,”

Constance added. “And when I saw your work in Charles Bell’s book, I knew it was time for you to come to me.” She smiled. “Change your domes and come down to breakfast. We’re wasting time.”

The table, when Mandy arrived, was spread with a redchecked oilcloth. A fire roared in the huge old stove and the windows ran with condensation. Mandy sat down to a plate of pancakes and syrup. There was a side dish of blackberries and a pitcher of fresh cream. Tea of an herb unknown to her completed the meal. “Everything you’re eating came from this estate. It can feed you four seasons of the year. And if you like homespun it can clothe you, too.”

“The village—”

“It’s an experiment. The villagers are trying to live really close to the land. Everything at the village comes from the surrounding fields and forests. The village lives by the breath of the earth, which is the weather, and the heartbeat of the earth, which is the seasons. And they live close to one another, too, unled except by the necessities that the land imposes.”

“Who are they, Constance? Are they witches, like we thought in the town?”

“Friends. Most of them are from Maywell. Some from farther away. They’re people who want to be reinitiated into personal contact with the earth. The village is an effort to balance old ways with new.” She smiled. “Because we have drifted so far from our relationship with the planet, many people have a tremendous need to rediscover their inner love for her. That’s what the village is about. It is only me first of its kind, I hope and trust.”

Tom came into the room. He stood beside Constance’s chair, looking up at her.

Mandy dug into her pancakes. They were sour and heavy and delicious, made of a rough-ground flour and raised by their own rot, with neither baking powder nor yeast added. With one of those swift, amazing leaps of his, Tom jumped onto the top of Constance’s head. Mandy was so startled she all but threw her fork. But Constance hardly seemed to notice the creature that had draped itself over her scalp like some kind of lunatic far hat with eyes.

The eyes sought Mandy. Didn’t he ever stop staring?

“Amanda, today I want you to begin your work. To try to do something very special and very difficult.”

Constance had leaned forward. Her tone was serious. But she looked—well—fantastically odd with the cat on her head.

“I want you to take your sketchbook and go out onto Stone Mountain and find the Leannan Sidhe and draw a picture other.”

Mandy remembered the statue in the maze. “The Fairy Queen—do you mean mere’s a statue of her up there, too?”

“Go across the hummocks to the foot of Stone Mountain. You’ll find a path starting at a grove of birch.

Just a track. It’ll be tricky to negotiate. Climb the mountain until you come to a big rowan bush. Really huge. Do you know what rowan looks like?”

Tom crawled down her shoulder and disappeared under the table.

“To me a bush is a bush, Constance. I have no idea.”

“Look for smooth gray bark, red-orange leaves, and clumps of red berries. You really can’t miss it. It’s the only one like it on the mountain. Just beyond it you’ll find a large round stone mat’s got figures etched into it. But they’re weathered, so you won’t be able to make them out. You sit yourself down on that stone. Sooner or later fairy will come. The Queen is instantly recognizable.”

Surely her leg was being pulled. “You mean—real fairies?”

“I mean real fairies. They’re about three feet tall, very broad-shouldered the men, and they’ll be wearing their whites because of the snow. White breeches and tunics, mottled white caps. And she will be in white, too. A white gown of silken lace. She’s blond, and she’ll have rowan in her hair. You’ll see.”

She was so serious about this that Mandy became embarrassed. Constance Collier must be senile. “You see these fairies?”

“My dear, fairy are quite commonplace in the Peconic Mountains. They live all through this end of Jersey and Pennsylvania. And they are not tinkerbelles and tom-tits, either, they are very real. Don’t look for pixies, look for small, solid beings who are very real. They are as much a part of the planet as people and trees and cats. Much more man we. They’re a Paleolithic survival, dear. The fairy were exterminated in western Europe during the Middle Ages because they’re pagans. They follow the Goddess. This country is so big the fairy never got discovered. Even to this day there are parts of Stone Mountain that man hasn’t explored. And all a fairy needs to hide is a bush not much bigger than a pillow.”

Mandy felt cut adrift from reality. This woman was rational and sane and serious.

“They built the burial mound you drove past coming here. And the hummocks out in the back pasture—those are the remains of a fairy city built before the Iroquois conquered this valley.” She tossed her head. “The same families that built those houses have been up there on roe mountain for thousands of years, waiting for the day when they can come down and reclaim their city.”

“What are they—I mean—what about language? Do they speak English? What should I say? And what if she wants money to sit for me? Tell me what to do.”

“Show the Queen respect. Bear in mind that we have been on this land three hundred years, and the Indians two thousand years. The fairy have been here since before the ice. Think of that. A hundred thousand years, maybe longer. You are on their land, we all are. Their Queen is the highest and most sacred being you will ever see in your life.” She paused. “Of course they may not show her, they’re unpredictable that way.”

As she had spoken, Constance Collier’s voice had rolled through the room, commanding, powerful, full of strength and assurance. It was the opposite of senile. This was the very voice of wisdom, and in spite of their incredible nature, Mandy found herself forced to listen to Constance’s words.

“Time is short, girl. Go your way. And don’t make a fool of yourself by getting lost.”

Ivy shrieked and jumped back from the table.

For an instant Mandy thought she was reacting to the wild things Constance was saying, but then Tom’s head appeared from under the tablecloth.

“I’m sorry! He stuck his nose between my legs!”

“Honestly, Ivy. You’re awfully edgy this morning.”

“His nose is cold.”

“You know to keep your legs crossed when he’s around.” She looked at Mandy. “Watch out for him.

He can be a tricky devil.”

Ivy moved away from the table. With a glance at her watch Constance told Mandy to get started.

“But I have no idea what to do!”

“I gave you your instructions. I want you to fall back on your own ingenuity. Amanda, darling, this is only the second test, and it’s not the hardest. Please get going.”

“Now, wait a minute. What test? You must be some sort of a lunatic if you think I’m going to go traipsing around snow-covered mountains looking for fairies! I was brought here to illustrate a children’s book. That I’m willing to do.” And that was that—

“I can’t tell you what I’m offering you, Amanda.” She looked at the cat, who was now sitting on the drainboard licking the lip of the hand pump at the sink. “If I did he wouldn’t like it.”

“The cat wouldn’t like it?”

She nodded. “Something very odd might happen. You’d be surprised at what he can do.”

He continued licking the drips off the pump.

“I don’t mind if you’re eccentric. In fact, I’m flattered that you trust me enough to be yourself with me.”

“Amanda, this is not senility or eccentricity. What’s more, it’s terribly important.” Her voice was pleading now. “You must do it. More is at stake than you can possibly know.”

“What? What’s at stake? I came here to illustrate—”

“Hush! Forget that book. It was just a pretext to get you here.” She reached across the table, grabbed Mandy’s collar with trembling fingers. “You must trust me, just for a little while. Amanda, I’d rather kill myself than lie to you. Please trust me.”

Tears appeared at the edges of Constance’s eyes. Mandy reached up and took the old woman’s hands in her own. “I can do with a hike. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

She simply could not turn down such a heartfelt appeal. The only thing to do was just open her mind and let things happen. Whatever she found on the mountain, she found.

If there really were fairies—well, what fun. She got up, drew her cloak around her, and went out. The door slammed behind her. She pulled up her hood against the gusts of Snow. The flakes were small and very hard, and they rattled against the thick wool. Mandy set out, her boots crunching the powdery half-inch thickness that crusted the ground, her face stinging in the fresh wind off the mountain. The clouds were low and gray; the sun was a smear in the east. As she walked along, Mandy’s heart thrilled.

She was so gay she thought to sing. Whatever happened on Stone Mountain, it was going to be highest adventure.

Even if she was really intended to enlist her imagination and draw the most wonderful Fairy Queen ever created.

She went down past the maze and through the herb garden.

Beyond the garden the land sloped farther down, then rose abruptly up the side of the first of the hummocks. When she reached the top she saw a group of men far off to the south working on her car with ropes and wooden pulleys. They wore deep brown homespun, and she could just catch the edges of a work song, the rhythm of the chant but not the words. The tone of their voices fairly lilted. The joy in them, open and unrestrained, carried clearly across the air.

Down the hummock she scrambled, trying to avoid getting her cloak caught in the bushes at its base.

“Amanda!”

A male voice. “Who’s that?”

A bush trembled. Instinctively Mandy backed away. There had been something harsh about that call, something that made her cautious.

A face, youthful. Satyr-like, appeared in the shrubs. With a great shudder of snow Robin stood up. He came close to her. “Where are you going?” he asked. He stood directly in front of her, dressed in a long wool cape, wool trousers, and a heavy coat belted at the waist. “You’re going to the rowan, aren’t you?”

Mandy said nothing.

“You know how the fairies keep themselves such a deep secret? If somebody sees them they don’t like, that person never comes back.”

Still Mandy said nothing. Robin seized her and kissed her with cold lips. “I love you!”

He was still a boy, and the road between seventeen and twenty-three is a long one. It was years since she had heard “I love you” uttered with such enthusiasm. “Thank you,” she said. How pale and controlled by comparison.

“Connie didn’t tell you anything about how to act, did she? About how to survive.”

“I didn’t get the impression they were dangerous.”

“Oh, but they are. They’re very dangerous. They have the fairy whisper. Nobody knows what it is, because it kills instantly. And they have tiny arrows made of splinters. The poison on the arrows gives you a heart attack, and no doctor can ever tell that you were poisoned. Hunters that die in the woods of cardiac arrest—half of them paid with their lives for seeing fairy.”

“Constance never even hinted at danger.”

“But there is! You’re being tested. Constance thinks you’re the Maiden, but they can’t be sure until the Leannan looks into your heart. She has all the fairy knowledge. She’ll read you like a chalkboard and either kill you or accept you. It’s all the same to the Leannan.”

“You’re telling me I could be killed?”

“If you aren’t just exactly who you’re supposed to be, the fairy can’t let you go. Surely you can see that.

They don’t want civilization meddling in their affairs. Anthropologists after them, for heaven’s sake. They saw what happened to the Indians, and they know that all their own kind in Europe were exterminated.

They’re very defensive, the fairy.”

Mandy began to entertain the notion of turning back. “Can you answer me one question?”

“Probably not.”

“Why me? Why am I being put through this—initiation or whatever it is.”

“You mean you don’t even know that? Constance is really playing it close with you.”

“She must be.”

“You’re unique, Amanda. She’s been watching you all of your life. Why do you think your father was transferred to Maywell? She brought him here so you would be close to her. What Constance knows—it’s impossible to tell, but she had the help of the Leannan at her disposal, as well as all the traditional lore of the witches. She commands a high and rare science, and you have to be very careful around her. You are old in the craft, Connie says.”

“Which craft?”

“Oh, wow, you’re really in a hole. Wicca, darling, witchcraft.”

“I thought that was it. All the town rumors are true, then. Everything.”

“Oh, not everything. By no means. All the good rumors, let’s say, and none of the bad! We’re learning the old ways again from Connie, and from the Leannan and her folk. And you are going to be our next Maiden, which is a sort of protector, especially if we’re under pressure from the outside. And our group is growing so fast, it’s only a question of time before the pressure starts. The very word ‘witch’ conjures up terrible images in people’s minds. They think we’re evil.”

“The wicked witch.”

“A false impression. Witchcraft is—well, you’ll see when you get to know us better.” His voice had taken on an edge of conviction. In many ways Robin was certainly a boy, but his love for what he believed was a mature emotion.

“Amanda!” It was Constance, calling from the edge of the herb garden.

Robin’s eyes narrowed. “She musn’t see me. Run, run to the top of the hummock! Wave to her, tell her you’re on your way.”

As Mandy found footing in the snow she heard his voice behind her, a barely audible whisper: “Blessed be, my love, blessed, blessed be!”

Blessed be? The witches’ greeting and good-bye. Mandy had read of it in Margaret Murray’s famous book, The Witch Cult in Western Europe. Nobody interested in fairy tales could escape without reading Murray.

She remembered her own dreams of being burned… and of being in a cage—awful dreams. She shuddered and went on.

Constance stood like a fur-wrapped stick a hundred yards behind. “Please hurry,” she cried. “Plea-ase!

The Leannan doesn’t wait for anybody very long!” Her voice was snatched by the wind and carried off among the rattling trees.

Far ahead of her she saw Tom jumping through the snow. She looked past him, to the dark tremendous mountain.

And she found that she was at least as curious as she was uneasy. She wanted to see the fairy. Oh, if there were such beings. A nonhuman intelligence sharing the earth with man. It was so enormous a thought that she couldn’t even begin to play out its implications, so she simply filed it in a comer of her mind to deal with later.

From where she was now she could see a few curls of smoke off in the direction of the village. It was interesting to imagine life there, wearing homespun and using candles within hiking distance of modem America. There was undeniable appeal in the idea of reacquiring ancient ways. The witch rituals, for example, were so very old and strange that they had been ultimately terrifying to the superstitious medieval world. Now anthropologists understood them as a remnant of human prehistory. The Old Religion, the way of the earth. Wasn’t “witch” an early English word for wise, or had that theory been discredited?

Crossing toward the tumbled, frowning face of the mountain, she heard off in the direction of the village a girl singing in a clear voice.

The lilting, sweet-haunted song did not fade until Mandy was battling her way up Stone Mountain.

The more she committed herself to it, the more brutal the climb seemed to become. The “track” was a miserable affair, twisting and turning, as often as not blocked by fallen stones or an outgrowth of brambles. But for the glowing snow there was little light, and would be no more unless the sun broke through the clouds that were coming down from the north.

As Mandy struggled along, her feet grew cold despite the thick woolen socks and the good boots. Time and again she slipped on an icy spot or was deceived by the snow into stepping into a hole. She had been climbing what seemed to be an hour when the incline finally grew less steep., She stopped to look for the rowan bush.

Everything was a jumble. She couldn’t possibly tell one plant from another. She turned around and found that she hadn’t come more than two hundred feet. She was just now getting level with the roof of the distant house, which stood on its dark hill among its trees, seeming most forlorn and distant at this empty hour.

The wind belled her cloak and made her remember the world within that curtained bed. And Robin. “I love you,” he had said. How could he love somebody he didn’t know?

She wiped the snow from her eyebrows and continued on.

Now the wind whispered, now it howled through the shaking trees. A fine hiss of snow made its way deep into her hood and reminded her painfully of her ears. She pulled the silken ribbon together. The track was now a mayhem of sharp rocks. To make any progress at all she had to crawl.

Paradoxically that very fact made her go on. The harder it became to climb it, the more she responded to the challenge of the mountain. She had not been given gloves, and her hands soon smarted from the cold and the stones. Her sketch-book, stuffed in her waist, jabbed her breastbone with first one comer and then the other.

If she had any sense, she would find some overhang, cuddle up under it, and make a few sketches of the Fairy Queen from imagination. Surely that was all Constance really intended. There could not be a Paleolithic species still surviving in these hills. And even if there were, they would be dirty, miserable, and scarce. Savages had none of the awesome beauty Constance had attributed to the Leannan. Savages living on a mountainside as rough as this would be little better than animals themselves.

The Paleolithic was thousands of years ago. Beyond memory. Beyond time. The whole notion was ridiculous.

And yet, Constance and Robin had both been so serious. Her whole life was dreams and visions and longing for miracles. Now she might be close to one—just might be. She struggled on. The wind roared without ceasing, like some immense tide restless in the rocks. Constance Collier had neglected to mention another little matter of some importance: the rowan must be on the very brow of the mountain, that dark, bare spine that got covered with deadly ice in the winter.

When she did come to the top, it happened so abruptly that she at first did not understand where she was. She almost staggered out onto a menacing slickness of ice as smooth as glass. She lurched and slid, then toppled amid her flapping, flopping cloak. Her sketchbook bent completely in two. She felt her pencils scattering out of her pockets.

Scuttling about, she retrieved them.

When she raised her head, she was frozen, but not by cold. This was a place of wonder. She could see to the north the long brow of the mountain, its gnarled trees huddling against it like warped children. The west wrinkled off forever. Beyond the Peconics were the Endless Mountains and he haze the northwestern fastness of Pennsylvania.

This was the border of one of the continent’s last empty corners. Below lay Maywell in its shield of snow, the steeple of the Episcopal Church marking the dead center of the town. She could see The Lanes and almost make out Uncle George’s house. The college’s black buildings squatted beyond the diagonal line of the Morris Stage Road. Directly below was the Collier estate. Huddling almost invisibly at the very foot of the mountain, the witch village blended so perfectly with the landscape that even looking at it she wasn’t completely sure it was there. After some time she counted twenty cottages, ten on each side of the central path. Foundations and walls for twelve more were in the process of being laid. The round building dominated the village. Occasionally a figure huddled from one door to another. Among the snowy hummocks tiny human dots raced about—the children of the village were out with sleds.

So very hidden, so secret, was the witch village. Through all of her growing up in the town, she had heard of only one incident of townspeople meeting villagers on their own ground—and those kids hadn’t seen the village itself. Now she was seeing the whole estate, village and all, and it was lovely.

It did not prove nearly as hard as she had expected to find the rowan. An imposing bush, it stood easily ten feet high, its northern side angled from the wind, the rest of it rich with berries, a gay-painted creature in this impossibly hostile place.

The rowan was so very alive that Mandy loved it immediately. It stood fast in its bed of ice and stones.

But it was also a great, gangling adolescent of a thing. When the wind made it gyrate, she wanted to laugh.

She made her way around it, touching twigs and berries as she went. Somehow she kept expecting to see Tom, but he wasn’t about. Naturally not. There was a cat who liked a fireplace. A romp along the lower reaches of the mountain had been quite enough for him.

She found the round stone Constance had described. It was perhaps eight feet in diameter and two thick, standing at a slight angle on the surface of the mountain. It was black basalt, completely out of place in this granite geology. The surface was carved over every inch, but time and wind had worked it, too, so only the presence of the etching could be detected, not its content.

Basalt is a hard stone. Mandy ran her hand along the ice-crusted edge. The thing must be very old. What tremendous effort it must have been to bring it here, for it was certainly an import.

Just as she had been told to do, Mandy went to the center of the stone and sat down. She folded her cloak under her and sat cross-legged, so that she made a sort of a tent and was at the same time insulated from the icy rock. She faced southeast, away from the wind. This cloak had been exactly the right garment for what she was expected to do, which was sit and wait… and wonder how crazy she was to have come here.

Some adventure to get this cold. Not to mention thirsty and hungry. An image of those delicious unfinished pancakes came to mind. She saw the dark-flecked surface of them, the slightly crumbly interior, the amber glow of the syrup oozing along the plate. The memory confirmed the fact that she had very quickly ceased to enjoy this. She was up here alone and this was a damned cold place and she was freezing.

No sooner had the thought of leaving crossed her mind than a bird, of all things, fluttered out of the rowan and flapped about her head. It wasn’t in the least afraid. This place must be very little visited. The dusty little sparrow was what city people called a trash bird. First with one bright, blank eye and then the other it looked at her. She had the distinct impression not only that it was a girl bird but that it felt kind of friendly toward her.

If she had brought crumbs she could have fed it, the little thing was so unafraid. She had never fed a wild bird before. “Sweet, sweet,” she said. It flew away.

The next moment a squirrel, its fur rich and gray-black, came ambling along. It stopped at the rowan and ate berries for a time. Then it, too, came over to the rock and looked at the strange creature there.

“Hi,” Mandy said.

The squirrel raised itself up on its haunches and wiggled its nose at her. Then, as abruptly as if it had been called, it jumped and raced away over the edge of the mountain. It had not been gone ten seconds before Mandy felt the pressure of paws on her back. She turned around and startled a raccoon, which tumbled about in the snow, righted itself, mewed at her, and went on with its casual sniffing of her cloak. Then it poked its frigid nose at her hands, smelling them carefully. “Well, I like you, too.”

The sound of her voice made the coon look up at her. It mewed back, the cry so full of question that she ached to answer. But she could only smile, as she did not speak coon.

She began to understand Constance’s sending her here. There might not be any fairies, but it was nevertheless a magical spot and a fine place to let the images flow in her mind. Despite the cold, the ice, despite everything, she could create extraordinary fairies here. There are places of life and places of death. Here on this inhospitable mountain between the sky and the rowan Amanda knew a feeling so strong it shocked her. Especially because it was not an aggressive feeling at all, but one of the peace and rightness of this world. No matter the fate of man, the loss or regaining of the old cup of kindness, peace abides.

A quick, hairy movement beyond the rowan brought her back to the present. She almost screamed when she saw what was there. Surely it couldn’t be. But it was, and it had just noticed her. It moved like a great black furry rock, humping quickly along. There was nothing cute about the bear’s black little eyes or the fog coming from its muzzle. She sat dead still, her attention fixed on the approaching beast.

The closer it got the faster it came. She could hear it breathing now, hear the clatter of its claws on the ice. A terrible, buzzing fear froze her.

When it bellowed she knew it, too, was a female, as the other animals had also been. If each animal could be said to represent an attribute of woman, this bear was the power of her protective instinct. Her greatest and most dangerous power. A she-bear protecting her cubs is the most fearsome of creatures.

Slowly, carefully, Mandy spread her arms, palms open. Why the gesture? She did not know. Now she could smell the bear, a thick odor of rancid fur. Its coat was shiny with secretions. Mandy found herself looking into the animal’s eyes. She saw there a femininity so savage, so full of implacable power, that it drew a choked little sound from her throat. The bear grumbled reply, stared a moment, then became indifferent to her.

It walked on past, crashing off into the fastness of the mountain. Perhaps this bear was without cubs, or they were not nearby.

While it had diverted her attention something else had happened, something which filled her soul with a coldness far greater than that of the wind.

About the rowan there stood six small men in snow-white coats and breeches. On their feet were white pointed shoes, and on their heads close-fitting caps just as Constance had described.

It wasn’t possible. And yet, here they were.

Robin’s warning rushed back into her mind.

She screamed, a single, sharp cry, quickly controlled.

These men had sharp faces with pointed noses and large eyes. Perhaps they looked so different precisely because they were so almost-human. But then one of them licked his lips, and Mandy got a glimpse of tiny teeth more like a rat’s than a man’s.

Together they raised bows, and mounted arrows on them made of twigs. There came then on the air the ringing of small bells and a whisper of tiny feet in the snow.

She appeared from behind the stone, all blond, her hair as soft as elder blow, her eyes startlingly dark brown, her body lightly dressed in the very lace Constance had promised. She was wee, not nearly as large as her six guards. On her head was a garland of rowan, berries and stems and leaves. Seeing such beauty, how ineffable, how frail, how strong, Mandy thought she would simply sink away. By comparison she herself was coarse. All delicacy seemed to have concentrated itself in this single small creature. Around her neck there was drawn a silver chain, and at her throat hung a gleaming sickle of moon.

Mandy instinctively lowered her eyes. It was more bearable this way, just looking at the woman’s feet, no more than two inches long, naked in the snow. Then the feet rose out of her line of sight. She looked up, startled. The girl was floating in the air. Wings flapped and she was gone. A great gray owl hooted from the top of the rowan, its horns darkly silhouetted against the sky. It took flight, racing round and round the rowan. Next hoofs clattered on the stones, and a black mare reared into nothingness, its neighs echoing off to silence.

An ancient woman, drooling, her teeth yellow, one eye put out, her hands fantastic with arthritis, scraped up on a stick. “Oh, my God! Can I help you?”

She held out her hands then and was as suddenly gone, the maiden spinning forth from her flying gray hair. The girl took Mandy’s large hands in her own tiny ones. She was grave now, her eyes limpid—and yet so very aware. They were scary. Her lips parted as if she would speak. Mandy remembered Robin’s warning about the whisper. The girl’s voice was as much the wind’s as her own. “You’re trembling,” she said.

“I’m cold.”

“Come a little way with me.”

Mandy started to stand up, but she was stopped by the astonishing sensation of being enclosed in enormous, invisible hands. Woman’s hands, immense and strong and soft. They drew her close to an invisible breast, clutched her, enfolded her. It was a terrifyingly wrong sensation; there was nobody here, and nobody could ever be so huge. She struggled, she tried to scream, she felt her stomach unmooring with fright.

But she found herself being cuddled in warm perfumed folds that could be felt and smelled and even tasted, so rich they were. All of the tension, the discomfort, the fear in Mandy’s body melted away. Then, just as she was beginning to enjoy herself, she was set down. She wobbled, she cried out, she flailed at the air.

Never had she felt so thoroughly explored, so—somehow—examined. She had the eerie feeling mat whatever had held her had also been in her mind. And was still there, looking and discovering, moving like a strange voice in her thoughts. But it wasn’t ugly at all, it was young and so very, very happy and so glad to meet her. She couldn’t help herself, she burst out laughing.

The lady laughed, too.

“Who are you?” Mandy asked her.

But she was gone, they were all gone, as clouds upon the air.