SOMETIMES THEY ARE DISTANT; sometimes they are close. As our world and Otherworld turn within each other, so we pass into and out of contact with each other. For many days they were absent—the woods were empty of story and song; sea, stones, and sky were just those, lifeless things, the elemental spirit gone out of them. Each time they leave I am desolate. I fear that they will never return, but, for all their legendary fickleness and flightiness, they have kept faith with me. Again, they have returned from Otherworld to haunt Bridestone Wood. I can feel them; I can hear them, calling for me with harp and flute and the songs of summer, calling me away, away, away from the mortal world, into the dream and the never-ending dance.
But I am afraid, undecided. There is a part of me that wishes nothing more than to lose myself in the magic and the light of the world’s beginning, that would cast off all human restraints like an ugly garment and be the bride of the Bridestone. But there is also a part of me that holds back, that clings to this world, afraid of the light beyond the shadows. There is a part of me with the voice of a tiny devil that whispers, “But what do they want with you? Why do they trouble themselves to stir from the endless delights of the forests of Otherworld and make the crossing to this world? Why do they seek you, Emily Desmond? These are faery folk, the Sidhe, the Dwellers in the Hollow Hills—their motives are as inscrutable to you as the changing of the seasons or the tides of the sea. How can you be sure that they do not mean you ill? Can you trust them?”
There. That is the question that lies at the heart of all my doubts and fears, like the rotted kernel of a hazelnut. Can I trust them?
I am torn; between caution and abandon, between mistrust and the call of the harps of Elfland. Do I go to them and let them do what they will? Do I stay, and perhaps with the turning of the years, lose even the memory of their music? My heart tells me go, my head cautions stay.
In the end, I know my curiosity will drive me to find out what they want with me. To know the answer, I will have to go to them.