There was no more time for gawking. A sudden stirring of the hairs along the back of her neck warned her of still more hidden observers. Daring to look away from the stag-man for an instant, she stole a glance over one shoulder.

The motion was met with a fluttering and a scurrying of movement among the branches of the near trees along the boulders edging the brook. Sinead caught only the vague impressions of an owl with the face of a child ducking back among the fallen leaves of an oak and a raccoon with human-appearing hands and feet scuttling behind a fallen log.

She shuddered, imagining how many more equally strange creatures still lurked in the shadows.

«You needn’t fear; we mean you no harm — though neither will we aid you.»

Despite having noted his human-like mouth, Sinead was nonetheless startled when the stag spoke in the voice of an ordinary man. Swallowing, she tried to slow the wild thudding of her heart. Unnerved as she was at being addressed by a half-stag, half-man, a tiny part of her mind was beginning to accept such odd things as being somehow natural on a day as strange as this one.

The steadiness of her voice came as a surprise. «I’m glad to hear you mean me no ill, great stag, as I face a mission of great importance and it’s imperative that I carry it out with haste. You see, my mother is gravely ill and I mean to brew her a healing potion. I have already collected the needed fever-wort and was just on my way home when, as you probably saw for yourself, I discovered myself somehow turned about and lost. It’s the oddest thing but no matter which path I chose I found myself drawn again to this same clearing.»

Even as she spoke, she took the opportunity to study the stag-man further and quickly found herself blushing. It was a ridiculous thought to have at such a moment, but she suddenly realized she had never seen a man with his upper body bared before. She was not certain she was seeing one now.

Luckily, he followed her words and not her foolish thoughts.

«There is nothing strange in your losing yourself here,» he said, once more surprising her by his casual tone. He sounded much like any handsome young farmer she might have conversed with in the local village. «The Sídhe of these woods guard the forest by means of an ancient spell, denying not entrance but exit to any foolish or desperate enough to tread this ground.»

Sinead frowned at the implied insult. «By ‘foolish’ I suppose you mean me?»

He agreed. «From the moment you stepped into the forest shadows you have doomed yourself to suffer the same fate as those before you — to wander eternally the twisted pathways of the wood.»

«As you do,» Sinead ventured with sudden understanding. «Were you and these others once human beings like me?»

The stag-man seemed to consider. «Perhaps,» he answered at last. «It is hard to recall a past so distant. For me it has been very long since I walked with human feet upon the earth.»

Sinead found that difficult to believe, for his face appeared only a few years older than her own. But perhaps that was a part of the Sídhe spell — perhaps ones such as he did not age or aged more slowly than most.

She realized he was looking pointedly downwards at her small feet, encased in shabby boots, and peeking from beneath the edge of her skirt’s ragged hem.

«For you, walking among men and women will soon become a dim memory as well. You will come to accept the wood as your home and to guard it as jealously as we.»

«Never. I would spend my life fighting against the spell. It would be an eternal strife.»

«You will find soon enough that there is little to fear and nothing to fight, just as you do not now despise your humanity or find it a fate to be striven against. You simply are what you are.» Even as he spoke, he turned away.

«Wait!» Sinead cried after him. «Don’t go, please; I need your help. I cannot live in this terrible forest forever.» At his expression she hastily amended, «I mean, certain as I am that it is a lovely place to call home, I am needed elsewhere. My mother, remember? She has no one but me to look after her.»

The stag-man shrugged a powerful shoulder. Sinead could not help admiring how it flexed the long muscles of his back.

He said, «If that is the case then I am sorry for you both, but there is nothing I can do. Only those who have already succumbed fully to the forest magic are capable of escaping its spell, and by then they have lost the desire to do so.»

«By succumbing to the magic.?»

«I mean those who have taken on the beastly forms such as those you see around you. Those who have become as we.»

A tiny flame of hope flickered to life within Sinead’s heart. «Then you, who have already taken your beastly form, know your way past this horrible ensnaring spell that has twisted the path at my feet and made me a prisoner to the wood?»

«We know the proper path out of the forest,» he admitted. «It is visible to us who are no longer spellbound.»

«Show me the way,» Sinead demanded boldly.

The stag-man stared at her with imperturbable eyes. «Why should I do that? It is too late for me. I have given up the human existence. Why should I aid another in escaping the fate that is mine?»

Sinead’s temper stirred to life. How had she ever found him attractive? Heavens, he was a. a beast. Her voice rose in mingled anger and desperation. «It is because you could not escape when you still possessed the will that you should help me! Because you were once the prisoner that I am now. Only remember what it was like to possess human compassion, human love and, if you still have any drop of human emotion within you, aid me in returning home to care for my mother.»

Something flickered briefly in the stag-man’s dark eyes.

She dared to hope her argument had moved him.

«Very well.» The declaration was sudden; she had the impression that even he was startled by it. «I will grant your request, but only in half.» His lips twisted in an attempt at a human smile that was both ghastly and vaguely appealing. «We do everything by halves here, as you see.»

Sinead was too uneasy about her circumstances and too shaken by the sudden and strange pull she felt towards this half-human, half-animal creature to spare patience for his odd bit of humour. Her heart, which had leaped a little at his first words, sank as the last sunk in. «What do you mean you will grant only half?»

The stag-man’s tone hardened. «I offer you a bargain. I and the others will grant you safe passage through the forest and will lead you out of this spell-wrought snare, but only on the condition that you must return to this place tomorrow morning. Take the fever-wort to your mother and make your healing potion. Tend her through the night but, at the dawn of the morrow, the magic will call you to us again.»

Sinead knew in her heart nothing she could say would persuade him to change his mind. He had been generous in his way. Unexpectedly, she found herself admiring what humanity was left in him. She no longer thought of him as a horrifying creature. There was something unusually graceful and somehow right in the blend of animal and man before her. What would it be like to be transformed as he — to lead a half-woman, half-beast existence?

She shook her head, it was not a possibility she was comfortable entertaining. All the same, she found herself speaking words of agreement. As easily as that, the dread bargain was sealed.

She shuddered as the reality of that sank in and tried to comfort herself. At least out of all of this, I may yet save Mother.

Back at home in the little cottage nestled at the foot of the hills, Sinead brewed up a strong tea over the hearth, using the lake water, the joyflower and the fever-wort herb.

Her mother was scarcely conscious and it was with difficulty that Sinead managed to trickle a portion of the tea into her mouth.

Then she crawled into a pallet of straw on the floor and fell asleep wondering if all she had done would be enough. What if she had bargained away her life to the creatures of the lake, meadow and wood for nothing?

She awoke early to find her mother’s fever-induced sleep had gone in the night, to be replaced by the deeper slumber of true rest. She had passed the point of crisis and was on the mend. Sinead rejoiced at the healthy pink glow in the formerly pale cheeks and was relieved on pressing a palm to the lined forehead to find it cool to the touch, the fever fading like the last stars of the night.

Fading stars. Sinead recalled the awful events of the day before, the rash promises she had made. She wondered which magic would come and claim her first — that of the lake folk, the Fae of the meadow or the half-beast creatures of the wood.

Reluctantly, fearfully, she stepped out of the cottage and into the grey light of early morning. There was a chill in the air. The grass under her feet was still heavy with dew and on the horizon a faint tint of rose lightened the sky.

How like yesterday it all seemed! Almost she could believe she had simply dreamed the events of the previous morning and afternoon. Almost she could wish she had.

It was just as the tip of the bright sun appeared over the far treetops that Sinead became aware of the magics. She could not be sure which of them she first sensed.

A great rushing sound, like the roar of a river overflowing its bank, came sweeping down over the hills from the north. It seemed to carry on it the call of the lake folk: a multitude of watery echoes flooding her way.

Instantaneously, another sort of magic began to well up from the opposite direction. This magic was visible to her eyes as a bright ray of sunlight, a shining, golden stream gleaming over the hilltop and flashing down towards the cottage in the valley. Sinead could almost hear the laughter of the faeries riding on the sunbeam, could almost smell the overpowering scent of meadow flowers and hear the drumming tread of delicate feet pounding out a steady, endless dance of mirth and madness.