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By Root 454 0

upheaval had ruptured and split the earth. The water spilled from a series of falls to his left, the rush of their passage a low thunder against the silence. The stream broadened and narrowed by turns as it worked its way through channels formed by the positioning of the boulders, hi some places it ran fast and wild and in others it formed pools so calm and still you could see the riverbed as clearly as if it were covered over with glass. Colored rocks littered the bottom of the stream, visible through the crystalline waters, and wildflowers grew in clusters all along the banks and slopes. The Fairy Glen formed a cathedral of jumbled rocks and trees that closed in the sounds of the twisting waters and shut out the intrusions of the world. Within its sanctuary, you were alone with whatever god you embraced and whatever beliefs you held.

John Ross stepped forward to the water’s edge after a moment, squatted, and touched the stream. The water was ice cold, as he had expected. He stared down into its rush for a moment, losing himself in time’s passage and the memories of his life. He looked at himself hi the water’s shimmering reflection, sun-browned from his year of hiking through England, strong and fit, his gaze steady and assured. He did not look like himself, he thought suddenly. What had changed? He had spent another year drifting, accomplishing nothing, arriving at no decision on his life. What was different?

He rose and walked along the jagged rock banks of the glen, working his way over the massive boulders, finding footholds amid the eddies and pools that filled the gaps between. He squinted when he passed through patches of bright sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his face, pausing in the shadows to look more closely at what might be hidden, wondering idly where the fairies were. He hadn’t seen any so far. Maybe they were all on vacation.

“If it’s magic you’re looking for,” a deep voice said, “you should come here at night.”

John Ross nearly jumped out of his skin, teetering momentarily in midstep on the rocks, then righting himself and looking about quickly for the voice’s source.

“It’s more a fairy glen when the sun’s down, the moon’s up, and the stars lend their radiance.”

He saw the man then, hunkered down just ahead in a heavy patch of shade, wrapped in a greatcoat and shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his face. He held a fishing pole loosely before him, the line dangling in a deep, still pool. His hands were brown and rough, crosshatched by tiny white scars, but steady and calm as they gently shifted the pole and line.

“You would like to see the fairies, wouldn’t you?” he asked, tilting the brim of Ms hat up slightly.

John Ross shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose so. At night, you say? You’ve seen them, have you?” He was trying to find something in their conversation that made sense, to frame a reply that fit.

The man’s chuckle was low and deep. “Maybe I have. Maybe I’ve seen them come out of the falls, tumbling down the waters like tiny bright lights, as if they were stars spilling out of the heavens. Maybe I’ve seen them come out of the shadows where they hide by day, back there atop the falls, within the rocks and the earth — there, where the sun breaks through the trees.”

He pointed, and John Ross looked in spite of himself, peering through a glaze of sunlight across the jumble of rocks to where the falls fell in a dazzling silver sweep. Bits of light danced atop the surface of the water, and behind the shimmering curtain shadows seemed to move...

Ross turned back suddenly to the man, anxious to know more. But the man was gone. Ross stared for a moment in disbelief, then glanced hurriedly from one bank to the other, from one place to the next. He searched the shadows and the sunny patches with equal care, but the man was nowhere to be found.

Shaken, he left the glen and walked back up the dirt and gravel lane to the blacktop, and from there back to the village. That night he pondered what he had seen, hunched over his dinner in an alehouse close to his lodgings, nursing a pint of