He laughed, and followed me into the trees. “This magic thing, you’re not making it up?”
“Why would I?” I didn’t get it. “It’s just that I really have sworn an oath not to do magic except to prevent harm, because it’s so difficult to understand the consequences. Anyway, magic is difficult to show, because it’s so deniable. You can say it would have happened anyway. And with the, um, the elves”—I didn’t want to say fairies, it sounded too babyish— “not everybody can see them, not all the time. You need to believe they’re there first, before you can.”
“Can’t you give me a charm so I can see them? Or teach me their names? I’m not like stupid Thomas Covenant, you know.”
“A charm is a good idea,” I said. I handed him my pocket rock and he rubbed it thoughtfully in his fingers. “This should help.” It wouldn’t exactly help him see the fairies, as all there was on it was general protection and specific protection against my mother, but if he thought it would, it might. “I haven’t read the Covenant books. I saw them, but it compared them to Tolkien on the cover so I didn’t want to read them.”
“It isn’t the author’s fault what the publishers put on the cover,” he said. “Thomas Covenant is a leper who mopes his way around a fantasy world most of us would give our right arms to be in, refusing to believe anything is real.”
“If it’s from the point of view of a depressed leper who doesn’t believe in it, I’m glad I haven’t read them!”
He laughed. “There are some great giants. And it is a fantasy world, unless he’s mad, which he thinks he is and you can’t tell.”
We were quite deep in among the trees now. It was muddy, as Harriet had said it would be. There were a few fairies in the trees. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to see, but hold tight to that rock and try looking there,” I said, pointing with my chin.
Wim turned his head very slowly. The fairy vanished. “I thought I saw something for a second,” he said, very quietly. “Did I scare it off?”
“The ones around here are very easily scared. They won’t talk to me. In South Wales where I come from there are some I know quite well.”
“What’s the best place to find them? Do they live in the trees, like in Lorien?” His eyes were darting about all over, but not seeing the fairies that were peeping back.
“They like places that used to be human and have been abandoned,” I said. “Ruins with green things growing in them. Is there anything like that?”
“Follow me,” Wim said, and I followed him downhill through a lot of mud and old leaves. The sun was out, but it was still cold and damp and the wind was freezing.
There was a stone wall about shoulder high, with ivy growing over it, and as we followed it along we came to an angle of wall, as if there had been a house once, and inside the angle where it was sheltered, snowdrops were pushing through the leaf mould. There was also a big puddle, which we stepped around. There was a half-height wall there, which we sat on, side by side. There was also a fairy, the one I had seen before on Janine’s lawn, like a dog with gossamer wings. I waited for a moment, quietly. Wim didn’t say anything either. Some more fairies came up—it really was just the kind of place they like. One of them was slim and beautiful and feminine, another was gnarled and squat.
“Hold the stone, and look at the flowers, and at the reflection of the flowers in the water,” I said to Wim, quietly, not that it made much difference how loudly I spoke. “Now look at me.” When he looked at me I put my hands on the sides of his face. I was trying to give him confidence. He wanted so much to believe, to see one. His skin was warm and just slightly rough where he needed to shave. Touching him made me feel more breathless than ever.
“He wants to see you,” I said to the fairies, in Welsh. “He won’t do any harm.”
They didn’t reply, but they didn’t vanish either.
“Now look to your left,” I said to Wim, letting go.
He turned his head slowly, and he saw her, I could tell he did. He jumped. She regarded him curiously for a moment. I wondered for a second if she’d enchant him and lead him away into wherever it is they go when they vanish, like Tam Lin. He put out his hand towards her, and she vanished, they all did, like lights going out.
“That was an elf?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“If you hadn’t said so, I’d have thought it was a ghost.” He sounded shaken. I’d have liked to have touched him again.
“They’re not all that human-looking,” I said, which was an understatement. “Most of them are kind of gnarly.”