‘I seek Wenna’s progeny. Show them to me, or show them not to be, but bring me to the truth of it. If there be a way to coax such offspring into this world, let me know the manner of it.’

So saying, I raise up the cup, close my eyes and then down the foul liquid in three hungry gulps, closing my mouth and throat swiftly afterward, lest my stomach rebel against the poison I am inflicting upon it.

All is good. It is begun.

I sit at my drum and pick up a steady beat while I await the effects of the draught. I let my palms strike the drum skin, flat and slow to start, feeling the sound and its vibration enter my body. As the minutes pass, the fairy toadstool enters further, deeper, wider into me, into my mind, my soul, so that I increase the pace of my drumming. Faster now. Faster! I feel a darkness grip me. The lake and the crannog, the woodlands and the meadows, all have faded to nothing. I am removed from them, and they from me. I exist only inside my head, until the magic will release me on my journey. Pain twists in my belly and scratches at my throat. My breath burns through me. There is a noise, a fearsome roaring of a storm, building, building, building until I must surely burst with it! Burst or die! It is so strong. As if my body cannot withstand what I have forced it to endure. Shall I be smothered, pushed into eternal darkness?

But no! There! I am released. My journey is under way.

Of a sudden, I am leaping through the summer hay meadow, the flowering grasses high above my head as I crouch, tickling my belly as I spring and bound. I am not being chased. I run for joy, for the wonder of the day, for the blessing of the ripening harvest, for the warmth of the sun. As I am, my eyes are not stung by the light. As I am, my skin does not burn nor blister in the golden heat. What freedom! No longer forced to dwell in the shadows, no longer a creature of the darkness, I can run with the singing birds, dart past the grazing cattle, twist through the fragrant flowers and herbs that release their sweetness in the daytime.