In the fairy fort

[Yvain Wintersong]

Garm and Pol edged cautiously through the fringes of the forest near Daneannis, each stealing glances at the other, then nervously looking at his feet as if to deny he had done any such thing. Scared? No, of course not. That's why Garm had accepted Pol's dare, and why Pol had cavalierly agreed to Garm's counter-dare. Just go up to the fairy fort on the old hill, and touch one of the moldering old gray stones.

But the little creek bed they were following grew narrower and narrower, and the afternoon grew darker and colder, and everything their parents had told them, so long ago, about the fairy fort up on the hill clamored more and more clearly at the gates of their minds. That thousands of years ago, Goldshire had belonged to the fairies, and that the flower of their youth had died in the wars against the Mercajas and the Brookshirerithians, and those remaining had turned sideways to the sun. Thus they lingered on in the old hill-forts, and that no one who valued their souls should go too close, especially not at night. And if you found a lonely traveller on the winding mountain roads, he might be a fellow Goldshirerithian in need of help...or he might be something else...something very old and not entirely human.

Even Garm and Pol knew that things were changing now. The new Duke had built a big road from Syrelwynn to Daneannis, itself connected with the road to Goldshire Hamlet and Shirekeep. A new schoolteacher from Brookshire had come to their town, paid for by the Ducal government, and he told them that the legends their grandparents had told them were out of date, that the hills and forests were a place of trees and animals and nothing else, that one day people would even build windmills on top of the hill to help power the little town.

Pol believed it all. Garm wasn't sure. So Pol had called him a chicken, and said he was a little baby, too afraid to go into the forest. Garm had said nuh-uh, he was eleven years old, and he would go into the forest if Pol would. Pol, trapped by his own logic, had agreed. So now both of them were in a forest neither of them really wanted to be in, and if either tried to turn back, the other one would never let him forget it.

"We must have been walking for a thousand hours," Garm said to Pol. "Maybe we're right outside Shirekeep, and we can spend the night in the Kaiser's palace."

"Nuh-uh," said Pol. "I bet we're in Elwynn already, and we're going to have to fight off giant spiders."

"I bet we're in Hyperborea by now, at the end of the world, and we're going to have to fight off polar bears."

"You dumbbell, Hyperborea's across the ocean. Don't you pay ANY attention in school?"

"I pay more attention than you! Which of us got a 50 percent on the..." and at that moment, both boys simultaneously realized how loud they were being, in such a dark forest, on All Hallows' Day of all days, and they piped down.

And as they became quiet, they realized there was the sound of music coming through the trees, a strange, seductive tune, one that spoke of far away battles and ages of glory, with a note of secret love and sadness hovering the melody. And at its center was a strange repetitive piping that could not be ignored. It was coming from ahead of them, and they looked at each other and were drawn to the music.

In what seemed only a minute, they were out of the forest, and in a bald spot atop the windswept summit of the hill. No grass grew there, no plants at all save for ubiquitious mold covering the ring fort whose broken walls rose precipitously above them. A wild profusion of mushrooms sprung from the ground almost like grass. And through one of the many cracks in the walls, the two children could see a young man, sitting on a dolmen, playing a pipe. It was not nearly enough to account for the many harmonies of the music they were hearing, but it was equally obvious that it was the central note. Intrigued beyond any possibility of fear, the children climbed through the gap in the wall, into the fort.

"Excuse me, sir," asked Pol, "but what are you playing?"

The man put down his pipe and stared at the children. He was young and lithe, with black hair and wild green eyes.

"A song without a name," he said. "You were very foolish, you know. In my day, children knew never to come to a fairy hill at twilight. Do they still teach you such things?"

"Mr. Potter says that the fairy forts were built by the ancestors of the Goldshirerithians, and were abandoned when Kaiser Raynor founded Goldshire's major cities," said Pol. "He calls them 'archaeological treasures'".

"Mr. Potter is a very silly goose," said the black-haired man. "These forts belong to the fair folk, and to all who have gone where they have gone."

"Where is that?" asked Garm.

"Here," said the man. "Here where the sun and moon are in the sky together, and it is always twilight, and mushrooms sway to breezes no man can feel. Look!"

And Garm and Pol looked up into the sky, and saw that it was twilight, and that the sun and moon were in the sky together, and that the mushrooms that coated the floor of the fairy fort were gradually moving back and forth, almost too slightly to be perceived. And they became afraid.

The man put down his pipe, picked up a harp, and began to strum upon it as he spoke. "In the old days, the fair folk controlled all the land from the Elwynn River to the Halberd Sea. And some of them interbred with men, and when the true fairies vanished, the land was ruled over by men with fairy blood. And the last of these was the house of Wintersong, and for many years they ruled here. But the last of the line was weak, and he felt the call of fairyland, and though he ruled for many years, in the end he could not resist, and he sailed sideways to the sun and left his people."

"We learned about him in school!" said Pol. "He became Duke of Brookshire and annexed Musica!"

"Shush!" said Garm.

"And now he is one of the fairies, piping their fairy tunes. But on Samhain and Beltane, the two days when the fairy world is one with the world of flesh, he returns to look over his old dominions and smile. And if he should see a man of Goldshire, he asks 'Is the Duchy free?' and when he hears it is not, he returns to the mists.

"The Duchy is free now," said Pol. "Duke Harvey Steffke took over a few months ago. That's why they're building the new road!"

"SHUSH, POL!" said Garm, elbowing his friend.

The black-haired man sighed. "So it is. Yet I feel no wish to go to Goldshire Hamlet, and pay my respects to the Duke, as once I said I would do. Foreigners from across the sea come to settle in Neurac, roads crisscross the once trackless hills of Ynnraile. My world is gone. But I shall offer...a gift."

"What kinda gift?" asked Pol, and this time, Garm didn't shush him.

The dark-haired man reached to the ground and picked two mushrooms, a pulsating orange one and a cool blue one that shone like moonlight. He handed one to each of the children, and bade them eat.

"What I miss most," said the man on the dolmen, "is my knights, my champions, true men of the soil of Goldshire, with fairy blood in their veins. Well, I shall bequeath some such to Duke Harvey."

"Sir, Mr. Potter said to never eat strange mushrooms."

"Then he is a wise man, but I am wiser still. Eat." And they ate.

"I like you," said the man, to them both. "You have courage. That will be necessary for the days ahead. Pol, you're inquisitive, and you don't fear anything, and you're quick to learn. Garm, you have respect, and a natural feel for the old traditions. And I trust you both will develop...other virtues too. Virtues that may otherwise be in short supply these days."

"Sir, I don't...feel well.." said Garm, who had finally gotten his mushroom all the way down.

"Hush," said the man. "Listen. I will play you a song." He began strumming on his harp, singing to an [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmOb5H8k ... re=related]old tune both boys knew well[/url].

A golden land, by the shining sea
Where the sun shines golden eternally
Where the rain falls, softly and quietly
On the Goldshire that I love.

How springs and winters alike have flown
Without a country to call our own
Till a Duke returned to the golden throne
Of the Goldshire that I love.

So many glories and years have passed
Like flowers felled by the winter's blast
But a golden age has returned at last
To the Goldshire that I love

...and Garm and Pol woke the next morning to the angry shouts of Mr. Potter. "Garm mac Aenghus and Pol Connair! I figured you'd be here. You know half the village is out looking for you? It's madness enough to run off without telling anyone where you'll be, but to spend the night out here? You're lucky you didn't freeze!"

Garm and Pol looked around. It was daylight, and the sun and moon were no longer in the sky together. There were a few lonely looking mushrooms scattered around the ruined fort, but nothing like the profusion there had been last night, and the fort didn't seem nearly as tall.

"Oh Raynor's blood, you didn't eat any of those mushrooms, did you?"

Garm rubbed the sand from his eyes and looked up at Mr. Potter. "Sir," he asked, "Can you tell me what Yvain Wintersong looked like?"

[Andreas the Wise]

Yvain posts again. He was always my favourite Duke ...

[Erik Mortis]

Isn't this just Scott?