Janet Lee Carey

“Do not wander in the deeps,Where the Shriker's shadow creeps.When he rises from beneath,Beware the Sharpness of his teeth.”

“The song she heard from the meadow was the same tune as the bird's call.She looked up in the trees.For a moment she thought she'd lost the bird, and she nearly cried out for him, but he fluttered down,landed right at her feet, and grew into a man.""Oh." Meg sighed.She'd always liked that part."He whistled the tune once more, then the fey man said, 'My lady,will you dance?""'I will.' She crossed the bridge to the meadow,and danced with the whistler.""Tell us they married," Meg said."The story doesn't go like that," Poppy reminded."It should." Meg stroked Tom's blood-clotted hair.I fumbled with the charcoal in my blackened fingers. As the story went, the girl danced through the seasons, but when she wandered home at last and reached her cottage door, she was a shriveled-up old women, for a hundred years had passed while she danced with the whistler,and everyone she'd known in her former life had died.Meg knew how it went.But when our eyes locked, I saw tonight she couldn't bear it. I found another bit of charcoal. "That very spring when the meadow was in bloom,the whistler, who had fey power to transform into a bird and sing any girl he wished to into the wood, chose the one girl who'd followed him so bravely and so far to be his wife. And she lived with him and the fey folk deep in Dragonswood in DunGarrow Castle, a place that blends into the mountainside and cannot be seen with human eyes unless the fairies will it so."I drew the couple hand in hand, rouch sketches on the cave wall; the stone wasn't smooth by any means. "She lived free among the fey folk and never wanted to return to her old life that had been full of hunger and sorrow under her father's roof."I sketched what came next before I could think of it. "A dragon came to their wedding," I said, drawing his right wing so large, I had to use the ceiling. "He lit a bonfire to celebrate their union." I drew the left wing spanning over the couple in the meadow. "And they lived all their lives content in Dragonswood.”

“We crept round the corner for the stairs."You will see Poppy entertaining the guard above." Entertaining? I thought, disgusted, but went on.”

“Inside,I closed the door quietly. Tom slept on his back in the straw with arms out wide like Christ crucified. I thanked Saint Barbara for guiding me safely thus far."Tom?"A stirring in the straw, a head looking up, a disgusted gasp. "Unclean! Do they send a leper to infect me now?"I ran to him,whispering. "Hush.It's me, Tess.”

“In the enchanted woodland wild,The Prince shall wed a Fairy child.Dragon, Human, and Fairy,Their union will be bound by three.And when these lovers intertwine,Three races in one child combine.Dragon, Fey, and Humankind,Bound in one bloodline.”

“Perhaps we are all too small-minded to glimpse creation, even out little corner of it.”

“There was something of the wildwood in the man who came and went illusive as moonlight moving through the branches.”

“We who work in fantasy today take the threads from all the story tellers of the past. From the ancient, many colored threads we work to weave a new cloth. If the landscape, the characters, and the creatures here call up the old tales told the beside the fire, when stories went from mouth to ear instead of page to eye then I have woven well and the dreamer continues to dream.”

“Even from behind, I knew the seated man was Garth. I'd seen him in chair, saddle, and by a campfire. I'd known him running with his hounds, grooming his horses, leaning back to look at the stars from the branches of a pine tree, hunched with concentration whittling a doll, carrying Alice through a storm, and even sparring with a dragon. A woman will know a man from all sides after that.”

“Even if he was a thief, he was my thief. I could not push him away anymore.”