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We stayed together for some time, Sam and I, in a little flat her uncle owned over the top of a grocery shop. Apart from the sex, which was plentiful we were unhappily happy with each other most of the rest of the time. Incompatible I think you’d call it. She was a stick in the mud whereas, as you know, I love to travel. But even with the Lady’s cowrie hidden away I really didn’t get much opportunity to until the latter part of the following year. I’d got severely itchy feet by then and Sam’s mother had become troublesome in the extreme, hinting darkly about marriages, mortgages, settling down and children, sometimes all in the same breath.

The nerdy brother was even more of a nuisance, demanding human biology lessons at every verse end on top of the maths and physics I was already teaching him every Wednesday and Thursday evening.

I told him I thought it was about time he left home, left his mummy and warm bedroom and made his own way in the world. He didn’t take too kindly to this suggestion and retaliated by burning small holes through the wall of his bedroom with the battery powered laser I’d made for him. It was a start I suppose. Until I’d arrived on the scene the berk couldn’t even spell the word ‘physics’ let alone make anything actually work. As it was he still had trouble writing his name, walking or seeing straight come to think of it. Excessive wanking whilst looking into a deep red laser beam was what did it for him.

So one morning when the sun was warm and Sam and her mother had gone shopping I gathered my small doings together into my rucsac and slipped quietly out of their lives forever. I was bored with sex with Sam, even with Sam and her mates on the rare occasion we got to go south of the river. Besides I’d been male long enough, far too long and felt like a change. Yes Sweethearts, as I cut across the meadow at the back of the house I felt distinctly like a new woman in more ways than one!

But Sam’s swine of a brother followed me, down the stairs and out of the door in a flash after catching sight of me through his bedroom window. The chances of that happening must have been highly remote because the nerd was usually glued firmly to his PC screen. Unfortunately the moment I chose to leave coincided exactly with the time he decided to get up for a pee.

Doggedly he pursued me across the fields, slobbering and dribbling like a Doberman with a technical model calculator firmly clenched in its jaws.

“Fuck off home!” I shouted, first at the gate and again where the path I was on entered a wood but terminal deafness had smitten him it seemed for he neither wavered in his walk nor slowed the pace of it by one millistep. In fact at the rate he was going I could see that, somewhere within the next mile he’d actually overtake me.

So at the first opportunity I stepped behind a sturdy oak, the most venerable of trees and watched while he strodelled past, teeth gritted, doggedly and determinedly.

He was on autopilot obviously and a good thing too for after another mile he was some distance in front of me still going like an alpenstock. I slipped through the next gap in the hedge and dodged headlong along the headland, as quietly and as swiftly as I could without disturbing so much as a rabbit. It was a simple matter after that to put one or two more hedges and ditches between us and, in a few hundred yards that is what I did.

There are pathways and pathways if you know where to look for them, those of foxes and rabbits are most frequent on the ground. The hare too makes her tracks as do red deer and roe and the landscape conceals them all when they are motionless, their dapples and tanned tones blending effortlessly as did, I hoped, my apparel for me.

And so it was that upon attaining the shelter of an extensive coppice I determined to hide there for the rest of the day.

There being no hollow tree to hand I crept into the shelter of a natural bower of dark green ivies and sapling oaks and cast myself finally upon a bed of fallen leaves to sleep.

The moon rose and woke me eventually, by the time she had climbed high enough to see me through the trees. Full faced she smiled, brightly lighting, setting silver shadows into the trees. So I signed her and acknowledged her beauty, then drew my bedding about my ears and fell in an instant back to sleep.

……………

At first light the following morning I donned my garb the other way around so to speak, my mood and situation being much altered, as it so often is overnight. How can I explain it except to say I had worn it inside out for two long years before. You know my meaning? I breathed deeply, taking in all the scents of the dawn and, elusive as moonlight and as intangible as they are, those same scents and that same moonlight were what finally did it to me. Caused me to change I mean. You might scoff and well you might, if fashion and preconceived ideas have tainted your perception, but I care not, neither for your ignorance nor for your inability to see some situations in anything other than a bemused, narrow minded manner. Save your sniggers, you may need them and your restrictions too, they are the only safeguards you have against the need to think. I shall not apologise for my own situation, for I am bound neither to teach nor to show you how or what to see.

Suffice to say I wrapped away his garments and shook out hers, my boots and drab outer garments remaining essentially the same, as my height and weight remained more or less equal, as did the size of my feet.

Then I breakfasted lightly on fruit and oatmeal, using up the remainder of the milk I had brought, but for once not bothering to make myself tea.

The sun was a good hand’s span above the horizon by the time I shouldered my rucsac and, while the air was still cool, the blueness of the sky promised another fine day. The Way beckoned unerringly a mere few dozen paces away, broad and straight across an expanse of undulating downland, wind scoured and desolate, unique and beautiful in a primeval kind of way.

I strode singing, exulting, revelling in the sensations in my newly awakened breasts between which Her cowrie hung lovingly, suspended on its thong. Luck, another Lady, looked upon me in the sunshine and I became blest.

The Way lay broad before me, die straight and vanishing against the far horizon. Ten miles I strode at least, without question and those all before midday.

But then the terrain began to change imperceptibly, from open heathland to a heavier, muddier kind of unquiet clay. The Way itself became narrow and rutted, with many a pool of stagnant water and patches of overgrown woodland standing along the sides. There were unmistakeable signs of other people too, footprints and hoof prints marred the smoothness of the mud and, here and there, the smell of woodsmoke drifted distantly.

I ate the last of the fruit as I walked, convinced I’d encounter new supplies very soon. Instead I came to a narrow valley with a stream in it unexpectedly. There were fruit trees on the other side it was true, a small orchard indeed, or so it seemed with the promise of apples and plums aplenty, but the most plentiful part of the whole valley I knew would be further north, around the narrow footbridges and stepping stones where the Way crossed the many winding meanders of the Narr river itself. At that point and for many leagues on either side the land belonged to the most famous of abbeys and lay securely enclosed and given over entirely to one of other form of agriculture for their benefit.

So I borrowed a couple of fresh plum from an overhanging bough and a league further on, in a clump of trees at a crossroads I saw the first markstone, this one an erratic by all accounts but planted boldly upright, prominent and revered, judging by the offerings which lay around it.

Pausing I made the required signs, murmured the appropriate words and placed my own offering, one of the tiny ceramic cowrie shells I carried for just such a purpose. Then I stepped back, feeling the day change and my demeanour with it. Now the sun became warmer, the sky cleared and the haze, which had until that moment filled the river valley began to seep away like milk through suspended muslin.

I thought of the Lady then, as I adjusted my rucsac, and of the myriad paths which had brought me onto the Way. It was ancient sure enough, as old as the hills in common parlance, as old as the hills and the valley ahead of me must surely be.

Whose feet had first trodden it I wondered and with what bold intentions. Magical mayhap or merely commercial for above all it was a trade route of sorts, almost certainly.

……………

There was a broken oak tree on the windward side of the bank, with scattered bark and tumbled branches, a lightning strike I thought possibly. There were marks in the soil too, drag marks, pits and pinpricks where fallen twigs and leaves had been.

Thinking little of it I passed by quickly and a hundred yards further on, at the summit of a rise I had all but forgotten it. But then, as I strode, I experienced Her magic all over again.

There are mounds alongside that part of Way, burial mounds from Mother Earth’s Bronze Age, or so historians say. But whether the mounds contained bones or ashes or even treasure, none of those experts ever dared tell. Bones and ashes will always sleep peacefully, but treasure, oh treasure means troubles and, if treasure there was once then surely it must have, long ago been stolen away.

The oak tree faded behind me, down the slope of the hill until it was no more. The day changed again, my demeanour with it, and with it came new insights, experiences and expectations.

Green grasses grew upon that mound, docks and daisies, wood sorrel and……and other things. Beside an arch which yawned, darker than a rabbit burrow but no larger I slowed my pace, my breathing, my disbelieving and tried for once to see with a child’s innocent eyes that which moved before me.

Faery folks live in old oaks, or so I’ve heard my mother say. Until bold man with a lesser span, tidied poor faery away. Now shun the thorn for he is born, a saviour to us all. A son, the sun……

Religion and superstition. Lies both of them!

I stopped short and short of breath, the rucsac I’d carried so effortlessly for mile after mile inexplicably becoming as heavy as lead. The bankside beckoned and I sat, wearied to my bones suddenly, all my energies drained.

We speak of Fairies but these were not they! No story book, fanciful Victorian invention could ever match what I saw here for the greens they wore were the greens of the earth, of the sky and the air as it washed through the trees, so green that, as beings in it they were all but transparent.

Maybe they were as tall as me or maybe somehow I was suddenly smaller. New Forests rose and with them new birds and beasts. Fairyland? Far from it. But a land of fairies nonetheless.

I left my bag against a stump with a crooked girl to guard it, and took the hand of an uglier man who led me through a jungle of grasses. Along a path I walked with him, where the grass stood higher than I did, down to a glade where someone had made, a boat on a stream so well hid…...

A tiny bay at the edge of the stream, no broader than my bent arm would normally be became my destination. And saw them readying at the waters edge the most intricate craft I’ve ever seen. In essence I suppose it was a coracle though in shape it resembled something else entirely, a galleon almost, with mizzen spars and mainmast all made from dried reedstems.

I stood and let the water lap my feet while the sandy shoreline glowed and gleamed as if every grain of sand was a priceless jewel in its own right until, slowly, imperceptibly I realised the scale, neither miniaturised nor massive, just different. And while the trees which overhung the brook were mere weeds elsewhere, the brook itself which ran, twinkling and glittering like quicksilver had no more width to it than a grown man’s stride, except there on the bend where the shoreline curved and the wavelets rose and fell ceaselessly.

Four or five of them stood on board while I stared open mouthed and suddenly drained of all energy. Grotesquely they leered at me, beckoning with fingers crooked like ancient twigs.

“……Oooooh you’re pretty……love your hair……love your hat and shoes……

No, no, no! These were not fairies as you have seen them, prettily, prissily in your picture books!

Cords made from split nettle stems snaked and twisted, guile beyond comprehension forbore, cunning unconcealed as they cast off and set the sails. Then their craft turned, moving into midstream and I saw her there, in the stern, proudly and terribly contemplating me……

All thought and emotion left me then, sucked by her gaze until I became emptied utterly, hollowed and scoured as if I’d never been.

I must have taken a step or two back from the brink although I do not recall actually doing so, for there was herbage and grass on the earth where I fell weakly.

The soil had a mustiness about it, like a……like a graveyard from where, all in one gasp I became smitten with sleep.

…………….

She materialised from the mists as I awoke, tears springing unbidden from my eyes. Grey green she stood while the breeze swept through her and went on its way. Of gossamer and sand, cloud stuffs and sunlight was she made, of utter blackness and utter light, of understanding and love and powerful, positive things.

Kneeling awkwardly I made as if to kiss her feet but she commanded me otherwise.

“I ask no sacrifice!” she said “when other dues are so sorely paid”

But I stayed at her feet until she bade me stand.

“Your tears? Surely you cry not for me?”

“For the loss of the oak tree” I said softly.

“For the faery folk then? The tree was theirs”

I could only nod miserably.



“A bad dream perhaps” she said. “But when you awoke, they had gone?”

“They had indeed” I told her sadly.

She held me tightly, cuddled me into her softness, into the softness of the sheeps wool which clung in clumps to the briars along the bank, into the safety of the morning chant, which I had all but forgotten, into all the love and reassurance that she could bring.

“Cry and let it go” she murmured, stroking my face “but grieve not for you are loved now and always will be!”

I sank into her, merged with her, became her and my sadnesses and disillusions dissolved like salt into the sea.

There is no love like it in the earth save Hers and that all encompassing. Lady Luck and Lady Love are one and the same but of the two Lady Love predominates.

“What are you needs?” she asked presently, knowing them all before I named them.

“Nothing and……and everything” I murmured and somewhere inside her glamour she laughed.

“Isn’t it hard being a woman sometimes? she asked.

“No……no harder than being a man and only then with different sensitivities”

“And sorrows?”

“Weaknesses perhaps, Like when I spoke of……of fairies” I said. “I spoke foolishly because while they were beautiful folk unmistakeably, were they not, in their features if not in their manners, also hideous to perceive?”

“Undoubtedly!” she confirmed to me clearly.

“And they stole……my……my hat and my shoes!”

Beside me the Lady gave a short laugh.

“Are those the self same items I can nearby see……?”

They’d left them on the bank, set neatly together. But they’d taken the jay’s feather from the hat brim and both laces from the shoes. Luckily I had spare ones in my rucsac.

Alas for the blue jay feather!

“You’ll find a bird of paradise plume on the morrow ere you venture very far!” she told me as I threaded the new laces.

We sat side by side under a sheltering hedge and when I tried her warmth, her heat she did not hinder me. Cautiously I explored and she, sensing my desires, murmured not nay. In return she searched and found and began to release my own smouldering fires, those I’d suppressed for many long weeks.

“Different isn’t it?” she asked, doing nothing. Yet I sensed her breath and her fingernails all the same.

She held a flower to my chin. A buttercup I would have said except it was the wrong time of the year.

“Speak to me” she whispered “tell me, which would you rather be?”

“Well I……”

“Don’t be shy!”

The concept sounded ridiculous to me.

“Neither or either?”

I knew not whether to laugh or cry for she knew me so very intimately.

“Do you sometimes make yourself cum while you’re writing?” she asked.

“No” I replied “I need both hands for the keyboard, but I do laugh a lot when the words flow, cry a lot when they don’t and at all times drink vast quantities of tea……”

Fragrant mosses cushioned us. Seedheaded grasses waved and bowed, seething soundlessly like a far off sea.

I didn’t do anything physically. I didn’t do anything at all in fact. Neither of us did. Except make love magically, magnificently and exhaustively, in our own special way.

……………

Long shadows lay along the hillside when next she spoke to me. Unknowably ancient her voice was as soft as the breeze.

“A bird of paradise plume” she mused “long and curly. It will go all the way around the brim of your hat”

“Bird of paradise?” I asked “In England?”

Oh I know I should not have doubted her.

“In England!” she assured me “Lying there on grass of the Way! You wait and see……”

© Aahlu. 161010.