“It doesn’t belong to me.”

“You could give it to the Lady for me.”

The fisherman shook his head. “If I take it from you, how will you leave the Fairy Glen? You cannot walk without the staff. Will you crawl out on your hands and knees like an animal? If you do, what will you find waiting for you at the rim? When you became a Knight of the Word, you were transformed. Do you think you can be as you were? Do you think you can forget what you know, what you’ve seen, or what you’ve done? Ever?”

John Ross closed his eyes against the tears that suddenly welled up. “I just want my life back. I just want this to be over.”

He felt the rain on his hands, heard the sound of the drops striking the rocks and trees and stream, small splashes and mutterings that whispered of other things. “Please, help me,” he said quietly.

But when he looked up again, the ghost of Owain Glyndwr was gone, and he was alone.

He climbed out of the Fairy Glen and returned—walking more than half the distance before he found a ride—to his inn. He ate dinner in the public rooms and drank several pints of the local ale, thinking on what he would do, on what he believed must happen. The rain continued to fall, but as midnight neared it eased off to a slow, soft drizzle that was more mist than rain.

The innkeeper let him borrow his car, and Ross drove out to the Fairy Glen and parked in the little parking lot and walked once more to the gap in the fence. The night was clouded and dark, the world filled with shadows and wet sounds, and the interlaced branches of the trees formed a thick net that looked as if it were poised to drop over him. He eased his way through the gap and proceeded carefully down the narrow, twisting trail. The Fairy Glen was filled with the sound of water rushing over the rocks of the rain-swollen stream, and the rutted trail was slick with moisture. Ross took a long time to reach the floor of the ravine, and once there he stood peering about cautiously for a long time. When nothing showed itself, he walked to the edge of the stream and stood looking back at the falls.

But the fairies, those pinpricks of scattered, whirling bright light he remembered so well, did not appear. Nor did the Lady. Nor did Owain Glyndwr. He stood in the darkness and rain for hours, waiting patiently and expectantly, willing them to appear, reaching out to them with his thoughts, as if by the force of his need alone he could make them materialize. But no one came.

He returned to his rooms in disappointment, slept for most of the day, rose to eat, waited anew, and went out again the following night. And again, no one appeared. He refused to give up. He went out each night for a week and twice more during the days, certain that someone would appear, that they could not ignore him entirely, that his determination and persistence would yield him something.