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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