“Come with me out into the garden, bring your wine,” he told Alfred. They walked outside, the sun assaulted Alfred’s eyes. “Passing out two days in a row isn’t helping you keep your feet, is it?” said Mr. Cyning as Alfred stumbled.
“I’m fine, just a little weak still.”
“Well, keep drinking that wine.” Mr. Cyning produced a loaf of bread and the two of them sat out in his garden under the shade of a large weeping willow facing Fey Forest. In the distance Alfred could just make out the mountain rising high above the forest. Mr. Cyning produced a pipe, tobacco, and some matches from his various pockets. Puffing slowly he turned to Alfred, “It’s all true, boy.”
“W-what do you mean?” asked Alfred terrified of the answer.
“The dreams, the ancient one you’ve met in the forest, the torches, all of it is true. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true all the same. Faërie is all around us. The world is so much bigger than you’ve dreamt of. It’s like what Hamlet told Horatio, there’s more in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies.
“Look, Alfred, I’ll be honest with you, elves, gnomes, dwarves, goblins, giants, dragons they’re all real. The ones who are good are better than you could ever imagine, but the wicked are darker than anything. Most people live their whole lives thinking Faërie is just another word for imagination or the supernatural. They never get the chance to see. Ah, we’ve been cursed with blindness for so long now. Not that Faërie has ever been easy to see, far from it, but we weren’t meant to be completely ignorant of it. Arthur knew Faërie, this wood was named after his half-sister, you know. Morgana was, well, she was confused she was. Robertus Kirk, MacDonald, Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien, they all understood, they believed in Faërie, even if they infrequently got into it, they knew it was there. You’re lucky, well, maybe that’s the wrong word. You’ve been given a gift, you’ve spent your whole life on the edge of Elfland, as it were, and now you’ve stumbled in.”
Alfred did not believe what he was hearing. Faërie? Elfland? Goblins, dragons, gnomes? No. He lived in a world where science had dispelled all those old beliefs. There was no way this could be true. Alfred was just about to say so when he noticed a ring of mushrooms right next to weeping willow. He let out a shriek he would have normally been ashamed of as suddenly an enormous mushroom from the centre of the circle began walking towards them. It removed its cap and wiped its brow, “Told him the truth at last, eh, Oliver? I told you you should have done it years ago. He would have believed you and I could have been left out of it.”
“I know what I’m doing. I’ve been at this a long time, Balthazar.”
“Of course, sir.”
Alfred was still staring, though the horror he felt at first was beginning to transition to curiosity. Hadn’t he always loved fairy tales and legends when he was a boy? It was at university he began to despise them in a fashionable exercise toward popularity. “What’s going on? What, or I suppose I should say who, are you?”
“Balthazar Toadstool, historian and mushroom shepherd, which is to say a gnome, at your service.” The gnome gave a bow.
“Alfred Perkins,” Alfred mumbled out, still somewhat in shock.
“Gnomes are among the wisest creatures in Faërie, Alfred” said Mr. Cyning. “And old Balthazar here is accounted wise even by his own kind.”
“You do me honour, sir,” was the gnome’s reply.
“What I really want to know,” said Alfred, “is what the devil is going on?”
“You’ve been having dreams, haven’t you, my son,” said Balthazar. “Dreams about a wondrous folk in the forest. But your dreams have turned darker, haven’t they? It’s no surprise. Evil never really goes away, we’ll never truly see the end of it in this life. You have been given a gift, my son, the gift of the second sight. All humans can see Faërie, or Elfland as many of us call it. They work at not seeing it. Even you tried not to see it, explaining away your dreams and the two times we have met, but unlike most humans you cannot not see Elfland. More than that, you have dreams of the goings on of Elfland. There’s a darkness brewing, such as we have not known for a long age. It’s been plaguing your world more than our own. All these wars you have been having, the hatred of humans for their brothers and sisters, but Elfland has been left relatively alone. We are the poorer for not having your world interact with ours, we grew static, but we endured in peace. Now, however, the evil plaguing your own world is making its way into ours.
“The dwarves first alerted us to it. They heard them in the deep recesses of the mountain, digging, coming in from goodness knows where. The dwarves, crafty as they are and even knowing the mountain as well as they do, cannot tell where they are or if they have come out. Your dreams tell us one thing, however, they are coming and they will bring destruction with them when they do.”
Alfred sat in rapt attention. “Who is coming?” he asked, breaking the ominous silence.
“Goblins.”
“I’m sorry. Did you just say goblins?”
“Yes, my son, goblins. Some of the fierce stand most wicked creatures ever to cross the face of the earth.”
“What are they? I mean, I remember reading about them in books, but they’re usually small mischievous little creatures, lesser demons or imps, awful for sure, but not this menacing.”
“Yes, well did your books tell you that mushrooms were cared for by gnomes?”
“No.”
“Then I would not use them as your guide through Elfland. That’s what I’m for.”
“Wait, what do you mean? Mr. Cyning, what does he mean, he’s my guide through Elfland? If there are goblins in there and they’re as bad as you say, shouldn’t I stay out of it altogether?”
Mr. Cyning sighed heavily. Alfred in looking at him began to realize how very old, even careworn, the eccentric old man of Carlisle was. It was as if he was looking at him for the first time and rather than an old man, it was a wizard, a sage, druid bard sitting next to him. “Alfred,” he began slowly, “Carlisle sits in a perilous place. While Faërie may be all around us and everywhere, there are some places closer to it than others. As I told you, you are quite lucky, having grown up on the edge of Elfland and being given a glimpse. A glimpse, however, is not all you’ve been destined for.
“Carlisle, because of its proximity to the major home for elves and dwarves, the elf kingdom and the lesser dwarf kingdom have their thrones in Fey Forest, has often known great beauty and wonder. Alas, it is also known more grief and woe.”
“And caused more as well,” said Balthazar quietly.
“Too true,” replied Mr. Cyning. “Alfred, trouble has often come from Elfland and attacked Carlisle, trying to find entrance into the world of men and overthrow it. The goblins especially hate humanity. Do you remember the story I told you about St. Nicholas’s?”
“Only a little. Didn’t you say something about goblins then?”
“Indeed I did. They tried to burn down the church on Christmas Eve over a thousand years ago. They were beaten back by the villagers, with the help of the faeries, and the flames around the church were extinguished.”
“Why did they want to burn down the church?”
“Suffice it to say that they hate humanity and wanted to do them harm. The whole village was inside at the time, as was the custom, and they thought to bring the whole town to ruin. From there they could have spread into the rest of the human world.”
“Why do they hate us so much? And why do they have enter our world through Carlisle?”
“Those are complicated questions. Balthazar,