Dennis McKiernan: Once upon a dreadful time

Well, ’tis better I stay away.”

As for Gloriana, she seemed softer, more placid, since the death of her only son. A gentle sadness had settled over her, as if a great burden had been lifted. And she had come to see that neither Regar nor Mirabelle could be held responsible for the straying of Auberon. Even so, she was merely cordial to Mirabelle, but she did bless the newlywed pair.

As to what the Phoenix had done to cause Gloriana to curse the magnificent bird, she did not volunteer, nor did anyone dare to ask.

Both the wedding and the reception after were held outside in the open air, for none present wished time to hasten by if they were foolish enough to dine in the chambers below.

But then who’s to say what might have happened had they eaten Fairy food and drunk Fairy wine in the Fey Lord’s Halls Under the Hill? Perhaps nought whatsoever; but then again. .

In a distant swamp somewhere in Faery, a huge bloated toad waddled to the edge of the flet and fell into the turgid water, and, with ungainly kicks, finally managed to slip under the slime-laden surface. But just ere doing so, he emitted a monstrous belching croak, announcing to each and every thing within considerable hearing that-great bulging eyes, long sticky tongue, and beautiful warts and all-Crapaud was free at last.

“Did they all live happily ever after?”

“Perhaps, yet then again perhaps not, for who knows what next the Keltoi will tell?” Afterword

Thus ends the fifth and final story in this series of Faery tales. Perhaps I shall return to this twilit land some day and travel once more through the shadowlight borders. What I might find there is unsure at best, but it is certain to be wondrous.

Before I go, I want to thank Philip I of Macedon for creating the Macedonian phalanx by using sarissae -counterbalanced pikes about eighteen feet long. I also thank his son Alexander the Great for his tactics in the Battle of Issus. In this story I used, in modified form, both that phalanx and those tactics in the Battle at the Swamp.

Too, I would thank Admiral Lord Nelson, whose brilliant but risky naval tactics in the Battle of Trafalgar I used, though again in modified form, in the sea battle of Vicomte Chevell and King Avelar’s fleet against the corsairs of Brados Isle.

In any event I am ready to leave. But ere I vanish, some might ask: What of Faery? What has happened to it? Where is it now?

Well, I assure you it still exists, side by side with the mortal world. It is still a place where curses are laid and glamours yet disguise, where red-sailed corsairs ply the seas, and Sirens sit on rocks and comb their hair and sing. And Pixies and Nixies and Hobs and Giants and other such still roam and tweak and hide in streams and practice other such tricky arts.