The Edge of Faerieland

In 1991, artist Brian Froud, illustrator of many books about faeries and designer of the movies Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, created over 50 drawings through which four authors sifted to find those that appealed to them, each one going away and writing, separately and without any more collaboration than a common understanding of ecological crisis, the book that those drawings suggested to them.

My partner was lucky enough to find Charles de Lint's contribution, 'The Wild Wood', but has so far not been lucky enough to find the other three books of 'Brian Froud's Faerielands'. (Until I gave her Patricia A. McKillop's 'Something Rich And Strange' for her birthday, thank you Amazon.com.)

When I opened that book, the first drawing, on the page facing and preceding Charles' first words, took my breath away. With the greatest humility, and respect for those who have made a living where I have not, and love for Brian's work, this is my response to that one drawing.

*

All around me the bush now stretched, the only sounds birdsong and the crackling of dry leaf litter underfoot.

I hadn't expected silence. Solitude yes, but silence no. I had not expected to be out of the house today.

It was supposed to be my day, one day alone sandwiched between the responsibilities of being at my job and the delights of being with my partner, one day when I had off and she didn't, one day to write with a mind undisturbed by anything except the need to brew more coffee or eat.

But the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley, and I couldn't sit still long enough to concentrate, or concentrate long enough to compose out loud. All morning, since I got up in the cold and the dark to wave my partner off, making her feel better about leaving a warm bed with me in it by no longer being in it, I had been restless and edgy and pacey, for no real reason and with no real solution. Food failed to settle me, coffee failed to focus me, archery failed to discipline me and taking the dogs for an unexpected and joyfully received morning walk failed to weary my itchy muscles. Grinding coffee failed to even keep me sitting still for long enough to finish, so after another cup had been brewed and drunk to no effect I gave up.

The rambling house was too small, the two neighbors too many, the open road and the wind in my face beckoned. Exercise didn't appeal but speed did, so instead of lycra I chose leather and boots and an old pair of jeans and a helmet with the visor pushed up.

I had not been expecting quiet. Even a 250cc is loud when it's two decades old and pushed hard. I didn't push so hard that I was concentrating exclusively on the road, my mind needing time to contemplate the scenery flashing past, but inside the helmet I was cocooned in muffled noise, and didn't have so many scattered thoughts filling the silence inside my head.

Winter was fleeing fast behind us, and even at the top of the mountain the air was hot and the sun hotter. The last few turns of the road were slow and steep and the single air-cooled cylinder of the SRX found too little air for its liking, so when I stopped at the top to admire the view, the petrol in the carburettor evaporated and silence swiftly descended.

I was not particularly surprised - it had happened to me before, and would again - but nor did I bother starting it again, the work of mere seconds. The bush behind my back, where I stood in a natural lookout, was more enticing.

There was enough of a track close by for me to push the bike out of sight of the road, put it on the centre stand in the uneven, uncertain ground, check its balance carefully and leave my helmet on the seat, my jacket and gloves flung over the gear rack. I slipped the key into my pocket, and started out into the bush.

The silence enveloped me without being oppressive, and although there was no moistness in the air and little coolness in even the least patchy shade, I felt instantly more comfortable, more at ease, than I had all day.

The ground underfoot was dry and the dead leaves and twigs crackled, but the sharp sounds were comfortable rather than intrusive or even joyous, and I felt myself, finally, blend into my environment and be at peace in it.

Perhaps that was why I wasn't startled to see a face, a wooden mask of sorts, in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly enough to look at it directly, of course, but it hadn't startled me and I wasn't startled when I saw that it wasn't there.

I stood still for maybe five beatings of my heart until I saw the knothole and the curve of bark that had tricked my eye. /Top-down processing/, my psychologist's brain threw at me. If the eye sees part of a face, fleetingly, the brain will provide the rest. Smiling lightly to, and at, myself, I kept on wending my way through the path, little more than an animal track, in the bush.

Out of the corner of my other eye, I saw another face. This one was no less wooden, but more detailed, a sudden flash of grinning superiority in twisted, rough-bark skin. When I turned to seek out the visual cues, at first I couldn't find anything, and only by taking a step back could I see where three different trees had lined up to produce an uncannily detailed sketch of a face.

I had to grin myself at that, and continued walking. Around the next corner, a quick hint of movement, a flash of dancing androgynous sylph, became upon inspection the nearly straight, silver trunk of a bluegum. Five metres down the track, ducking under an overhanging branch, a patch of shadow turned out, after all, not to belong to a tall, stooped figure with a long beard and spidery legs.

I kept on going, this time keenly but playfully on the lookout for any little patch of shade or shape or colour that might hint at the semblance of a countenance or figure.

I wasn't too surprised that, on the lookout for optical illusions, I saw none, but then I walked around a corner and, breathing deeply to fuel my pace, breathed out but forgot to breath back in again.

This time it was no optical illusion.

There was a dense patch of trees, covered in one of the vines that festoon these forests, seeking to overwhelm all that they cover, and at a little more than head height from the ground, shaded but not concealed by the foliage and vinery, rested an unmistakeably artificial wooden mask. It was a masculine face, wise and age-etched deep, its countenance between its wrinkles and bony edges as smooth as polished wood but its beard bark-uneven and its outline tapering off rough-edged. Leaves dead or dying wove its hair, and fern-fronds sprang where horns would not have looked out of place.

I remembered to breath again, but had to work hard to make up for lost time. No matter how hard I stared, this was no illusion and I had to ask myself who had left it there, and why here, where every corner seemed to conceal flashes of life where life was plainly not?

Then the mask moved, and once again the breath died in my throat.

The saplings and the branches and the leaves and the vines that had concealed the figure wearing the mask did not move aside to permit its passage; they merely no longer inhibited it.

The figure was unmistakeably feminine and female, the skin of the throat and torso silver tinted faintly with the dry, soft, bluish-green of Eucalyptus leaves. The throat itself was slender, and around it hung a black choker with an obsidian sphere set at its front. She was wearing a gown that might have been made from Paperbark bark or the skeletons of dead leaves, having about it somewhat of the appearance of a mesh without even the appearance of transparency. It hung down un-gathered from her sloping shoulders, draping over the outer halves, revealing most of the inner, of breasts full and round. Her skin was smooth and everywhere subtly curved, her belly had the faint swell of fertility and her belly button, although strangely human, was in no way out of place.

Her arms appeared bare, but around her hanging forearms was wrapped the ends of a cape which seemed to have just now been pulled off the rocks it was mossily covering in some wetter part of the mountains.

As she stepped forwards her legs appeared from the vegetation, her gown revealing too her mound, softly furred, glowing softly greenly silver in the half light, and the insides and, for tantalizing moments, the fronts, of long and smooth thighs.

Although her figure was somehow even more unreal than her appearance, the strongest possible sense of unreality came when my eyes flicked back up to find hers and saw that, as before when I had not known it to be worn, its own were too heavily hooded and deeply bored to reveal any others.

It was only then that I noticed something I should have already seen, and which made me feel somehow more comfortable and safe. She was not looking at me, or walking in my direction. In fact, she wasn't, as I had thought upon turning the corner, directly down the track. She was off to one side, in a small natural-seeming glade, and was walking across in front of me, from one side to the other. Glancing quickly towards her destination, I realised that I was merely standing at the apex of a triangle formed by three figures, and realised too that I should be thankful that I had seen her first.

Her king, for such he must surely be, was a head taller than me at least, no common height, and ruggedly, roughly, earthy and strong to her ethereal beauty.

The mask he wore was feminine, and beautiful, but I could not imagine that the two masks were of each other's faces. It was long and had a soft delicacy of line, but also quirkiness and mischievousness. It's hair could have been grass, or petals, I could not tell, while its eyes too were too deeply bored to show the slightest touch of the eyes behind.

His body was strong, but neither big nor lean. His torso was the bole of an ancient tree, his limbs its twisted, gnarled branches, his feet uprooted roots, his skin flaking, cracking or peeling off, all of it rough and dark brown. His hair where it came above and around the mask was the hard, coarse black fronds of a Blackboy fern.

From his shoulders hung scraps and tatters of mosses and lichens, which clung also to his back and his hips, but clothing it was not, and from his hips thrust forwards an erect phallus in proportion to his body and as smooth and as smoothly curved as water-caressed driftwood.

Neither lord nor lady gave any indication by the slightest movement of hand or head or body that they had seen me, or were at all aware of my presence, and neither had yet made the slightest sound, not even of foot on leaf-litter. I looked where their feet landed, and saw movement of the mulch, but it was if the dead vegetation flowed away from their feet, to allow free passage to the earth below, collecting again when the foot had passed. I looked where the lady had sprung from, but although I have a writer's brain I do not have an artist's eye and could not tell if there was the slightest change to vegetation that I hadn't really noticed to begin with.

I stayed where I was, seeming no more able to move than I was to explain what I was seeing, an accidental witness to an unreal scene as the lord and the lady met halfway between them, in the middle of the track. They made yet no sound, but the lady raised her hands to the lord's waist and the lord raised his to her shoulders, sliding them under her gown with a delicacy that seemed alien to his gnarled, knobby fingers. He slid his hands down her chest as she slid hers around his waist, revealing as his wrists pushed back her gown the complete curves of her breasts, greenish nipples hard already before his touch.

They were still moving slowly together, with a calmness and gravity that added to the dreamlike quality of the scene, and the flared tip of his phallus seemed to kiss without quite touching the small swell of her mound before they stopped, his hands cupping her breasts and her hands slid up to press against his lower back.

Their masks were kissing the air between them, her nipples kissing the air over his chest, but hands and, perhaps, forearms, were the only points of contact between them as they stood still, perfectly upright despite his body that made him appear to loom and stoop over a partner no shorter nor taller than him, nor more nor less upright.

When next they moved one green-tinged silver leg went back, one rough brown leg moved forwards, and they knelt, sinking to knees and then further down as she leaned backwards and he forwards, neither masks nor nipples nor genitalia moving one unfathomable fraction relative to each other as she sank without seeming support to the ground, the dirt and dust and rocks and leaf litter forming her bed as he moved over her without any more appearance of support, the only movement other than their legs and torsos coming right at the end, as his hands slid around her breasts from cupping to resting, as though placing his whole weight upon them, yet without their shape changing more than gravity demanded.

Now her nipples retreated from his (I could see now, despite the light no longer being in my favor, that yes, he had nipples, two dark, uneven broken-branch knotholes on his chest) and he followed her, his phallus slipping so smoothly and easily inside her that I missed seeing it happen, noticing only when his hands slid around her flanks and they lay chest-to-chest and hip-to-hip, that I could see at the last the base of his shaft clearly parting her lips.

Their masks had not yet touched, nor moved closer or further apart, or sideways or any other direction relative to each other, but the frozen expressions of wisdom and impudence seemed to mirror each other so perfectly that maybe they did not need to kiss.

My sense of unreality changed to one of guilt, as I realised that I really was the voyeur here, and surely could not be wanted as witness no matter that they had ample opportunity to see and hear me, and I tried to tear myself away, at least my eyes, and beat a hasty retreat the way I had come, along the track and onto the bike and away, but I could no more move from what I was seeing than I could explain it.

I felt myself the outsider but not the foreigner, watching without comprehension but also, bizarrely, without the faintest trace of bewilderment.

Lying on their forest bed, mask-to-mask and body-to-body, the lord and the lady started to move, and a feeling of what I could only describe, lacking any other noun, as humanity, entered the scene.

Her knees parted and lifted on either side of him, her ankles drawing back beside his knees as her hands slid up his back to where his shoulder blades should be, her fingers spreading as she pressed her palms against him.

His hands had no room to pass underneath her so they spread around her ribcage instead, from ground to pressed-out breasts as, his legs still, his hips moved smoothly, rhythmically, but neither quickly or slowly, up and down, thrusting himself in and out. I could not see past her thighs to what was happening at their juncture, but I could see that he must be using nearly his whole length as he moved with vegetable tirelessness, stroking her vagina, its texture foreign to my knowledge or imagination, with what had looked an unbending wooden shaft.

It was then, watching these two bush faery engaged in the most animal of acts, that I felt my perceptions of my own role here change. It began to seem to me, watching nearly unblinking, that I was no voyeur here, but participant; my presence not accidental, but planned; my role not superfluous, but prerequisite.

I can not account for the shift in perceptions, nor justify them, but as I watched on it became more and more important to me that I continued to watch, not for my behalf but for theirs; that I had remained at the apex of the triangle and been drawn in to their engagement not physically, nor even spiritually, but in some other way, indefinable yet unavoidable.

I wasn't quite sure, as I stood there watching the man of wood steadily fuck the woman of wood, if they were moving mechanically or passionately, if they were rutting or making love. They continued to make no noise, their masks did not move, their hands upon each other made no more movement and neither did their legs. Only his hips moved easily up and down, her legs hiding the point of union from me.

Then, unexpectedly, a change. Her hands moved up to grip his shoulders, her legs raised her hips off the ground, her back arching so that only her shoulders and feet and head made contact with the earth, as he sped up slightly, but only enough to be noticed, and his hands slid slightly down, his fingertips curving around her back where before the earth had blocked their passage, his weight still taken on her breasts, his legs still not moving.

I felt weak, the first physical sensation I had felt since being stopped by the appearance of her mask, and it was the weakness of being drained of energy, not the dizziness of intense arousal or the satisfied exhaustion of exercise or sex. I felt fatigued, with no evident reason, my legs seeming to hold me up by perfect balance not muscular strength, not wobbling but not feeling stable, and my shoulders feeling the drag of the weight of my arms.

For a second, the thought of panic entered my head. What was I doing there? What was I doing witnessing this fantastic coupling, a mortal, human, man who didn't believe in faery, who had a solid and real life and partner to return to? There was an uneasy thought on the edge of my mind, but it came no further in.

The feeling came to me that culmination was near, that there was energy I could not feel building up to the point of saturation. I couldn't see anything, still couldn't hear anything, and couldn't feel anything at all, but my mind was alert, almost feverishly, seeing this couple on the ground in an almost hyper-vivid light and too much, painfully too much, detail, every flush of green in her skin, every line in his, every splash of light on the curves of her body and every patch of shadow in the caverns of his, shrieking at my eyes.

I felt as though I should be clenched bow-string tight, but instead I merely stood there, drained of energy but still upright, bones poised but muscles slack, watching, watching, helplessly watching.

There was a break in his rhythm now, a new tension in the undisturbed, unchanged line of her bent back. Every time he thrust in, there was a hesitation at the end. Every time he pulled back, there was an eagerness, a rush, to thrust in again. At the edges of my mind I had the vague thought, too weak to penetrate to full, lucid consciousness, that neither he nor she had either instinct or experience to guide them, but were learning as they went alone, earnestly and carefully.

Whether or not they would remember this, perform this act again, or even exist any longer I didn't then and don't now know, but in their learning they appeared to reach success, for even their mechanical act managed to attain fulfillment and he froze inside her, buried to the hilt, no change in line of back or arm or the position of his head, no change at all in her, although I knew, beyond all doubt, that she too had cum.

How I know this I don't know, for at that moment I felt a shock throughout my body like the dryest, most detached orgasm in the world, and my body crumpled from the ankles upwards, at the end my torso keeling backwards so that my head hit the leaf mould of the track without pain or even shock.

I lay there for half an hour before I felt able once again to roll over laboriously, get up on hands and knees, stagger to my feet and stumble away from a clearing devoid of any other figure.

It felt like an hour before I reached the bike again, although it can't have been more than fiifteen minutes, and I climbed straight back into my gear and got straight back on, the only thought in my mind to get home.