In the afternoon of the next day we were walking along, still on the gently rolling land, moving gradually uphill – not in the Drearwold yet – and suddenly Freydis stopped. She was looking up into the trees.

  “Look at that."

  Up on the trunk of a tree, about twelve feet high, was a wreath. Green, with white flowers. It appeared to be made of laurel.

  “What an odd place for a decoration,” she said. “We are not alone here.”

  We looked around us, saw no one, heard nothing, and then resumed. We saw a few more of the wreaths, all at the same height.

  And not much farther along, we began to come across large gaps in the pines, where stands of fruit trees were growing. This included a group of apple trees, and then asiminas.

  “There will be people about, now,” Freydis said. “Or some creatures. These trees have been tended, and planted. And those apples have been regularly pruned.”

  “We can hope they are friendly, whoever it is,” I said. “I don’t think your dunters, or firbolgs, or trolls, are caring for orchards like this."

  Next, we passed a stand of laurel trees, some of them flowering. Then the pines resumed, but now they seemed almost like a buffer zone, between the laurel and we knew not what.

  “Eyes open,” Caiside said. “Let’s not be caught unaware by anyone.”

  And then of course a voice rang down from above us:

  “Hello there, travelers!”

  It was a woman’s voice. We looked up – we must have looked like three surprised dogs jerking their heads up all together, ears cocked – to see someone climbing down a tree. She lowered herself through the lowest branches and then stepped down the remainder of the trunk, grasping it with her hands and toeing with her boots.

  She looked older than Freydis and I, but younger than Caiside. She had nut brown hair tied back, and wore a green dress with soft leather boots. She had a yellow scarf around her neck. She looked – healthy. I wouldn’t say beautiful, although she certainly was, but more so just healthy. She looked very at home in the woods, among the trees.

  She hit the ground and turned toward us. She had bright green eyes.

  Caiside, who was to my left, lifted her right crutch slightly and brought it down onto my foot, hard, out of view of the woman.

  “Dryad,” she whispered. “Keep your wits about. Actually, close your eyes.”

  I did not. The woman was a pleasant and pleasant-looking person, but I did not feel entranced by her. (Of course, that may have been a component of an entrancement: one might be so entranced that one was not aware of being entranced at all. Perhaps this feeling of immunity was actually a giveaway that one was, indeed, irreversibly entranced. So whether one felt entranced or not, one might be entranced. It was hard to know.)

  (It struck me, however, that I doubted Mabel, Daisy, and Twyla would have started poking fun at me with a song, had they been present and watching. And that might have been indicative.)

  As she approached, she rubbed her hands on her dress, at her hips, to get dirt off them, and she then kept slapping the cloth to knock the dirt off it in turn. I had pictured a bewitching dryad – if that’s indeed what she was – wearing a flimsier dress and standing demurely behind a tree, that sort of thing. But this woman here walked up to us like a farmer.

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  “What welcome visitors,” she said. “I am Collina. What brings you to the high pine forest?”

  I didn’t feel like trying out our cover story, with her; and apparently neither Freydis nor Caiside wanted to, either, because we were all silent. Just in the few moments we had spent with this woman Collina, I guessed she would see right through that tale.

  “Well, it seems as though you don’t wish to share,” she said. “That’s fine. Things not shared may be better unknown. And just seeing our woods is reason enough to visit.”

  She looked at each of us, in turn.

  “The two of you,” she said to Freydis and me, “are from Enkel Kanindal, I would say. But not you,” she told Caiside.

  “Not you,” she repeated.

  And then she said, more to herself than to us:

  “A wanderer in these woods. One who has walked difficult roads but continues walking.”

  And then she added, more quietly yet:

  “Continues walking though it be very wearing. Very wearing.

  “Well,” she said to Caiside, in her regular voice again, “I would say you come from somewhere that is lighter, and warmer; but you have spent many seasons somewhere that is darker, and colder. But no matter. Come along and I will show you all my home. You may spend the night here.”

  She motioned further into the woods. Freydis and Caiside made to follow her, but I spoke:

  “Thank you for the offer, but we were hoping to cover more ground today.”

  Freydis and Caiside looked at me as if I were crazed. Collina just answered:

  “Walking much more today will put you into the Drearwold. Better to rest before attempting that. If that is your path. Let me show you my home first, and then you may decide.”

  She resumed walking, and we followed.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

  “You had seen us coming?” Freydis asked.

  She shook her head, still smiling.

  “Not you three, and not your path. But I know so many friends are out there. We mourn for people we have known who have passed on, and for those with whom we have lost touch; but what about those we should know but have not yet met? I wait for them. Come along. You’re all safe here.”

  She led us through the woods as they became denser, eventually thick enough with trees that they concealed what was beyond – and that turned out to be a clearing with her house. A twisting, very narrow path led through the dense forest growth, and then suddenly we spilled out near her cottage.

  It was made of logs, with a roof of shakes. Flowers grew all around, blue and red and orange and yellow, and bees were about. It had a porch on front, with wood columns.

  Behind it was an extensive clearing, with crops growing; potatoes, maize, various vines. The land dropped a bit, and there was a covered well. Behind the well were more farmed rows. Off to a side there was a small house for fowl which I later learned were ducks.

  The sun shone down over all, what with the large gap in the forest cover. The four of us stood there, taking in the beautiful clearing; and even Collina herself seemed charmed by it all.

  “You have a wonderful hidden estate, up here,” Caiside said.

  Collina responded:

  My road ran through a pinewood forest.

  Others would have me stay below;

  but here I climbed, my tilth to grow.

  Kept on working when I was sorest.

  Each new spring, more seed to sow.

  I labored to bend the undergrowth

  until my home was near concealed

  while minding, too, my garden’s yield.

  Each day attending to them both:

  received woods and planted field.

  The verdure flourished by my hands;

  within this soil a potence lay.

  Men below might hope me away

  but here will I be molding lands.

  I’ll keep the dales for another day.

  The morning air that’s bright with pine;

  diamond stars in a sky of black;

  a hill’s expanse of laurel, lilac –

  this glebe of woods I claim as mine;

  I doubt if ever I’ll go back.

  Evelyn De Morgan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons