(Read Part 1 first.)

Count Alaric did not question his wife further about Midsummer’s Eve.

He saw only two possibilities: either she would remember nothing and his questions would distress her, or she would know but continue to tell him nothing, and he could not bear to hear her lie.

He went finally to the wise woman Magda, who had helped his mother before him, and sought her advice. Magda told him to bring her a lock of his wife’s hair.

When he had brought the lock, Magda stood,

holding the hair, like a faint imprisoned moonbeam, in her strong brown hands.

Then she dropped it on the coals of her fire, and it burned with a green flame. With great pity in her face, Magda informed the count he had married one of the fairy folk.

It was her people and their music that continually filled that corner of her mind that never was present with him. It was being away from her people that made her unable to know who she was or whence she had come.

“But then she may someday dance with them and never return,” said Count Alaric. “How may I keep her from always thinking of this other place?”

“There is one way,” replied Magda, “by which a mortal can win one of the fairy people for himself, and that is by offering her a love so perfect that it leaves no room in her mind for memories of any other life.”

“But my love is already perfect,” Count Alaric insisted. “I would fight or live or die for her. There is nothing more I can do.”

“There must be,” Magda pointed out gently, “or she would already be yours.”

So Count Alaric spent the following months being, if possible, even more tender and solicitous to his wife, never letting a day go by without expressing his affection.

And while she always accepted his attentions and tokens with delight, he grew sorrowful as he observed the distant part of her never diminished.

He was careful to conceal his sorrow, however, and settled in his mind as Midsummer again drew near that he would follow his wife to the dancing place and capture her home again.

He would not allow the fairy folk to steal her away.

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From Barbara Leonie Picard’s The Faun and the Woodcutter’s Daughter.

Riding through his lands the morning of midsummer’s day, young Count Alaric came upon a dazed young lady wandering in the early-morning dew.

He was more distressed than she at her lack of memory, and took her home. While he could not discover who she was, he found her lovely, and she was willing, so they married and were happy together.

The Lady had no skills, neither for entertainment, nor of industry, but as she was the wife of a count, with servants to care for her, and seemed to need no amusing, it made no difference.

Count Alaric loved her greatly, but while she seemed fond of him, part of her mind always seemed to be somewhere else, and once Count Alaric observed her dancing strangely to music only she could hear.

Count Alaric took her hands in his, “Tell me, Catherine,” he said, “tell me the truth, are you happy with me?”

She smiled and laughed and kissed him. “Of course I am happy with you,” she said.

But his heart was heavy, even as he took her in his arms, for he saw still the look in her eyes, as though she thought of something else.

~

Later, near again to Midsummer’s Day and returning early from a three-day trip, Count Alaric hurried, desiring to see her on the anniversary of their first meeting.

Approaching a great meadow near his castle, his horse’s hooves making no noise in the thick grass, he saw a group of 20 or 30 figures dancing in the moonlight and realized it was the fairies celebrating Midsummer’s Eve.*

Then he realized that one of the figures was not dancing in green but in crimson and gold, and he recognized his Lady Catherine.

Afraid the fairy folk had bewitched her and would carry her off with them, he drove his horse toward them at a gallop, but their nearness suddenly spooked the animal and it bolted from the clearing and back the way it had come.

It was three miles before Count Alaric regained control and forced its head toward home.

The Lady Catherine was in her bed when he went to find her, and she was happy we was home early. But she was also tired, though she denied having been anywhere in the night.

She was in earnest and guileless, and Count Alaric already believed her, full of relief, when he turned and saw the crimson gown draped over a chair.

Its skirt was heavy with dew.

I hope to finish this tale tonight or tomorrow morning.

*There are several different images of the fairies. I hope you understand by now that the fairies of this story were not the “little people” of pixie dust and wings, but the haunting type, barely distinguishable from humans.