It was its own hawk200. But manned hawks must often rise over Foxcastle. Fairies were known to go hawking, using merlins, he supposed, to bring down larks: a merlin would be proportionate. Angus the shepherd, who had seen a fairy, said it was a head taller than the tallest thistle, portly, and holding itself very stately and erect. So much for sleeping in a snake’s cast weed201! But poets always spin nonsense out of reality, piling Pelion on Ossa202 for a giant, whitening a lady’s hand to new-fallen snow. There was considerable variance about the Elfin complexion, authentic reports ranging from pallor to gipsy swarthiness. The fairies who came out of a hill in Suffolk were green. Other authorities held that they are invisible to mortal eyes, or only to be seen at dusk, when colours would be muted. Angus had seen his thistle fairy at dusk.

James Sutherland rubbed the ache from his ankle. His shoes were dry. He put them on, but did not get up. There was still a good stretch of the long summer afternoon to run; the sheep on the opposite hillside had not begun to move upward to their sleeping place. With every moment the rich drowsy scent of the heather intensified. He would stay a while longer.

When he woke, it was night. Clouds had gathered, blotting out moon and stars. It was cold, the heather had lost its scent. He lay unmoving, to husband his warmth. Later, he woke again. It was still mirk night, and so silent that he could hear, as though it were close at hand, the burn in the valley. Lulled by its unresting voice, he fell profoundly asleep.

A fingernail pricked him awake. The heather was gone, the clouded sky was a shadowy stone vault; he lay on a stone floor, and was bound hand and foot in swathings of cobweb, so elastic that when he moved they yielded, so tough that they would not let go. The fingernail explored the convolutions of his ear, left it, traced the lines on his cheek. Other hands were fingering him, lightly, delicately, adroitly. His shoes were taken off, his toes parted, the soles of his feet prodded. His coat was unbuttoned, his shirt opened. Fingers tweaked the hair in his armpits. The watch was pulled from his fob pocket. He knew they would not stop at that. The cobweb bonds yielded as he writhed and struggled, and each time he thought he had snapped them they tightened again. The explorers waited till he lay exhausted, replaced the watch, and proceeded methodically to his genitals.

Not once had they inflicted the slightest pain, except to his feelings. He did not even know when they left him, only that they were gone. He lay in his cobweb bonds and wept. For these were fairies, these silent invisible tormentors. Throughout his life they had been his dearest preoccupation. He had believed in them, venerated them, championed them. How had he offended them? Why were they so ungrateful?