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By Root 446 0

indecision. He told himself that he would not go back to the Fairy Glen, that he would not put himself at such obvious risk, that what was at stake was not simply his life but possibly his soul. It felt that way to him. He stayed within his rooms reading, trying not to think, and when thinking became inescapable, he went to the pubs and drank until he slept. He would have run if there had been any place left to run to, but he had exhausted his possibilities for running long ago. He knew that he had come as far as he could go that way, and that all that was left to him was to stand. But did standing entail going to the glen or staying clear? He drifted in increasingly smaller circles as the hours passed and the time of his summoning drew closer, and he despaired of his life. What had he done to bring himself to this end, to a strange and unfamiliar land, to a ghost who drew him as a flame did a moth, to a fairy glen in which magic might be possible, to the brink of madness?

After a tune, he came to believe that whatever waited in the Fairy Glen was inextricably bound to him, a fate that could not be avoided and therefore must be embraced. With acceptance of this came a sort of peace, and he found himself wondering on the day of his appointed summoning if what had drawn him here and made him feel that self-discovery was at hand was linked in some way to what would happen that night in the glen.

When it was dark and he had eaten his dinner, he put on his warm clothing, his hiking boots, and his slicker, pocketed a flashlight, and went out the door of his cottage. He hitched a ride for part of the distance, then walked the rest. It was nearing midnight when he turned up the dirt and gravel lane past the sign that read FAIRY GLEN. The night was still and empty-feeling, but the skies were clear of clouds and filled with stars, just as the fisherman had foreseen. Ross breathed in the night air and tried to stay calm. His eyes adjusted to the darkness as he moved along the road, through the fence, and down the trail into the glen.

It was darker here, the starlight failing to penetrate much beyond the overhanging branches of the trees. The glen was a world apart, a rush of tumbling water and a jumble of broken rocks. Ross made his way over the massive boulders and along the stream banks to where he had twice seen the fisherman. There was no sign of him now. Within the moss and vine-grown walls of the glen, there was no movement. Belatedly, Ross thought of his failure to advise anyone of his plans. If he should disappear, no one would know where to look for him. No one would know where he might be found.

He reached an open space on the near bank between two huge boulders, a place where the starlit sky was clearly visible overhead. He glanced back at the falls, but he could not see them, could only hear the sound of the water spilling off the rocks. He stood there waiting, not knowing what he should look for, not certain yet if he should stay or run.

The minutes slipped past. He glanced about expectantly, emboldened by the fact that nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing was going to happen. Perhaps the fisherman had played a joke on him, on a gullible American, leading him on about magic and fairies...

“John Ross.”

The sound of his name was a silvery whisper in the silence, spoken so softly that it might have come from inside him. He stood perfectly still, afraid even to breathe.

“John Ross, I am here.”

He turned then, and he saw her standing at the water’s edge across from him, not quite in the stream and not quite out of it either. She seemed to be balanced between water and earth, qn the brink of falling either way. She was young and beautiful and so ethereal in the bright starlight that she was almost not there. He stared at her, at her long hair, at her gown, at her slender arms raised toward him.

“John Ross, I have need of you,” she said.

She moved slightly, and the light shifted about her. He saw then that she was not real, not solid, but made of the starlight and the shadows, made of the night. She was the ghost