they said we stole babies.

[immortal_belovd]

Trees in the Vale of Mythago Woods stood taller than ivory towers in their day. Their grey shone better, was more pure than any stone spire. The branches of these trees reached outward with gnarled old arms. The smallest twigs of these trees crackled with life. These twigs bore leaves that never died. Amongst these trees there lived a colony of faerie so old and so young that when Time took census of them, she lingered on each tawny head and smiled her grains of sand .. When they laughed and when they fought, when they died, she remembered to forget them.

Creatures of beauty and thin, stem-like grace lived in the Vale. Wish giving faerie of power and gravity, they were given the task of seasons in the Mythago Woods. When spring rose it was because of the Faerie King, and when winter laid blankets on wheat fields, the Queen was the cause .. They grew strong and quiet in the way of the wise, some warriors, all pure followers of the Mother. The faerie of the Vale in Mythago Woods made good, honest men stray from their travels and the occasional sweet-craven theft .. In penance, they gifted the peoples of Xanth Grange and any who journeyed - any who were brave enough and strong enough to ask - the wonderful and fragile, awesome and often deadly power of the wish. The kindly ones of the Vale in Mythago Woods took no blood in offense. Handsome, unequaled faerie men. Exquisite and unmatched pixie women. Winged children often mistaken for cherubs, for angels that brace up the throne of the Celtic God ..

The nearby city of Gilead had traded closely with the peoples of the undying valley for as long as man had made his mark there. With their aid it had thrived and had become a place of sprawling prosperity to vie with the cities of Thessilane .. It's healing baths were the awe of the surrounding countryside, its race of humans was said to have often mingled with faeriekind. Gilead was not simply built atop the ground - it had *grown,* thrust up from soil on so many planks and on so much fine, nutrient rich soil that their trade of fruit and vegetables, grain and cotton, tobacco and spices thrived with a nearly audible heartbeat. And then, in the midst of all that was good and brilliant: the children of Gilead began to disappear.

At first the stout, strong Men of Gilead believed kidnappers or undead predators had taken residence in the green city. They took up torches that had only been lit for light alone and used them instead to peer into the darkest basements, to stir up the dust in Gilead's highest and smallest attics .. They tore stones and hay bales from the walls, they unbricked their wine cellars. They searched high and low, under streets and in their skies while children continued to disappear .. And then, one morning at the well in the marketplace, Idae Misa'lk was found dead in her Sunday clothes, tucked sweetly into the water bucket with a fae-fletched arrow buried deep in the socket of her left eye. She had been five. Her mother's name was Ursuma.

Ursuma cursed the Vale with her screaming, Ursuma and fifty others; the stout, strong Men of Gilead took up their torches and set out to burn the kindly ones in their beds. One faerie, though, had not been in her swan feather bed that night. She had gone to pick daisies in the meadows of the Heath. She was a Prince's daughter, and she was finer than spun glass - she was Vialweh, pixie Helen of the undying Vale. When she took flight at dawn from hissing meadows, she carried an armful of bluebells and daisies. She saw the glow in the sky when she was twenty miles away.

Those who were fleeing and the few who survived to witness the death of the Vale will tell travellers that it rained meadowflowers that night. They will say that the shrieks dissolved, one by one, becoming a single voice that cried out until dawn was done and the blaze was no more. They will whisper about the spirits of ancient trees and the ashes of a pixie country - the rebuilding of Gilead, the discovery of a monster they were never able to catch. They will never be ashamed that they single-handedly sent a thousand sterling souls to meet their maker. In this way, Vialweh of the Vale was reborn from ash and flew north with a pouch full of scorched buttons, ribbons, and beads. She went to Myrken Wood to make the Everspring. There, her fate would struggle to make up for forgetful Time - death would seek, again and again, to reclaim it's Mother's daughter.