YESTERDAY WAS THE HOTTEST day yet; it was so unbearable in the gardens that we were forced inside, where it was at least tolerable. Only Daddy seemed unaffected by the heat, bustling around on his funny businesses like it was a cool April morning and not the hottest day of the century (so the Irish Times said), while Mummy and I flopped around expiring on sofas, begging Mrs. O’C to bring us another jug of iced lemonade.
It was too hot to sleep last night. After what seemed like hours of tossing and turning and trying to force myself to go to sleep (which only makes you all the more awake), I gave up the struggle and got up. There was still light in the sky. Whether it was the light of the sun just set or about to rise I do not know: all the clocks in my room had stopped at different times. There was a bright moon, just past full. I don’t know what made me open the window; perhaps I hoped for a cool and refreshing breeze off the mountains, but if anything, the air outside was heavier and more stifling than in my bedroom. Everything was purple and lilac and silver, and still; so still. It seemed like a midsummer night’s dream come true.
Then it was as if a silent voice had called my name: Emily. I had to go out there, into the night. I had to. I remember noticing that the Westminster chimes on the landing had stopped at ten to two. As I tiptoed downstairs and out the french windows in the dining room, I heard the voiceless voice call again: Emily. Outside, the air seemed to embrace me. The perfume of flowers was overpowering—gardenias, night-scented stock, honeysuckle, jasmine. Everything was as still and silent as if time itself had stopped, not the Craigdarragh clocks. I crossed the sunken garden and the tennis court. Where clematis, sweet pea, and hollyhock screened off the summerhouse, I stopped. I could feel the compulsion inside me, but I resisted. It was a foolish thing to do, for the more I resisted, the stronger and stronger it grew, until it overwhelmed me. I untied my shoulder bows and stepped out of my nightgown. As I did, it seemed to me that the entire garden had been holding its breath and now released it in a gentle sigh. I did not feel ashamed, or afraid—not then. I felt free, I felt elemental, I felt as if I was not naked at all but wrapped in a cloak of sky.
The voiceless voice called me toward the gazebo, grey and silver and shadow in the moonlight. Under the eaves glowworm lights flocked and buzzed. But these were not glowworms, for glowworm lights are cold green and these were blue and silver and gold. It seems strange now (many things seem strange now about that night, though they seemed as natural as air then), but I was not afraid. The voiceless voice called me forward again, and as I drew closer, the lights swarmed away from the summerhouse eaves and hung in a moving, dancing cloud before me. I gingerly stretched out a hand—not in fear for myself, but rather that I might frighten them away. One detached itself from the flock and settled onto my palm. It allowed me to lift it up in front of my face, and I saw that it was not an insect at all but a tiny, tiny winged girl, no larger than a fly, glowing all over with silvery-blue light. Then she leapt from my hand and the cloud of lights moved away from me, between the screens of hollyhocks, toward the rhododendron garden and the woods beyond. I followed on; I had no doubt that I was being led.
The faery lights led me over the stile across the demesne wall and into Bridestone Wood. And there the magic, so long anticipated, so deeply desired, was waiting for me. Bridestone Wood was alive as I have never known it before—every twig, every leaf, every blade of grass breathed the old magic of stone and sea and sky. My heart hammered in my breast and my breath faltered, so strong was the call to come away, come away. The lights led me onward, inward. The woods were thick with floating thistledown which brushed softly past my body. The perfume of green growing things was as overpoweringly heady as the flowers in the Craigdarragh gardens. The grass beneath my bare feet sparkled with dew but I did not feel cold—I did not feel anything except the need to penetrate deeper, closer. And the deeper I went into the wood, the faery lights increased in number. There were glowing sparkles in bush and tree and leaf, and more than lights. Half glimpsed in the shadows and the faery flicker, then gone again, I thought I could distinguish faces and forms, half human, half plant—faces like open flowers, like leaves, like patches of silver lichen and wrinkled bark. Onward I went, and inward. I cannot now recall the specific moment when I became aware of their presence; their manifestation must have been gradual—a slow stirring together out of air and moonlight and shadow. At first I thought they were night birds or bats—they were close, but not so close as for me to be able to make them out clearly. Then they were all around me, clinging to the harebells and the brambles and the ivy and the branches of the trees, springing into the air as I pushed past: the faeries.
They were of a size that would stand comfortably in the palm of my hand. All were naked and as innocent as babes in Eden. Of course faeries, like angels, know neither shame nor conscience, though I was surprised to see that they were not all female, as I had always thought. They had both females and males. The males were wild, eldritch little creatures, with pointed ears and teeth; dark slits of eyes, like cats; and a great fierce mane of dark hair. Their wings were like those of bats, as opposed to the sheer gossamer ones of the females. For their small size, they seemed to have disproportionately large genitalia. Also the females, though altogether more delicate and diaphanous, each possessed large pairs of breasts that hung almost to the waist.
In my spellbound state, I did not realise how far I had come—to a place on the side of Ben Bulben where a rock face had, at some distant time in the past, broken and littered the slopes with large, sharp-edged boulders. In the dell at the foot of the cliff, among the moss-covered rocks, the guiding cloud of faery lights dispersed to roost on the branches of the trees, as if a constellation of stars had fallen from heaven and caught there. I looked around, not certain what to expect; then, from afar, I heard the silver notes of a harp. And suddenly, I could see them. All of them, everywhere. Suddenly every flower was a face, every stone a pair of eyes. I saw the leprechaun on his cobbler’s stool amid the cool moss of the dell. I saw the pookahs—creatures the length of my forearm with the body of a boy and the head of a horse—capering agilely through the trees. Among the roots squatted things like tiny fauns, with the legs and horns of a ram and bright, human eyes. In the distance I saw the figures of the woman archer and the blind harper, whose music filled Bridestone Wood, floating like the drifting thistledown through the trees. And beyond them, almost hidden by the moon shadows, were the Lords of the Ever-Living Ones: the antlered helmets of the Wild Hunt, the moon-silvered spearpoints of the Host of Sidhe. The music swelled until the woods rang and I felt my heart would burst. And then there was silence—profound, absolute silence, and stillness. And far off, among the trees, there was a golden glow. It drew nearer, and as it approached, the host of the faeries let out a bubbling murmur of awe. Heads bowed, knees bent, spear points touched the moss. The golden glow entered the clearing and I saw that it was a wheel. It was five-spoked, much as I have always imagined a chariot wheel to be, rolling by its own power. It rolled toward me, enveloping me in its golden glow. I felt an overwhelming need to kneel before it. Inside the light I saw that the wheel was not just one thing, but many things at once: a golden salmon, a spear of light, a swan with a silver chain around its neck, a radiantly beautiful man with the green branch of a tree in his hand. The words of wonder and awe seized in my throat. I reached out a hand to touch the magic and mystery. The golden light blazed up before me… and the next thing I remember, I was back again beside the summerhouse where I had dropped my nightgown, alone and naked and cold. My feet were like two blocks of ice in the heavy dew. It is strange, but I remember feeling guilty and embarrassed as I pulled on my nightgown. The sky was beginning to lighten to the east; dawn would soon be rising over Glencar. I shivered and shuddered in the cold before the rooming.
I do remember one more thing. As I slipped back through the french windows up to my room again, all the clocks I passed stood at quarter to four.