Heat blasted Heather's face, singed her hair. Colors swirled around her body.
She opened her eyes and saw a wave rushing toward her. She threw-up her arms, trying to scramble to her feet, but her body would not respond, and then she heard a voice, her voice, the voice of ageless wisdom.
"Who among you is brave enough to come under the realm of Faery? For I am Queen Fay and I have come at your bidding, but I leave at my own time and of my own will. You can always call me near, but . . . you can never claim hold of my enchantments for they are mine and mine alone."
She spoke as if delivering a fierce warning that Heather was trespassing in her realm, like the kitten who so wants to play with the potted fern grown for fresh oxygen more than anything else.
She stood against the backdrop of the waves, long, golden hair faintly ruffled by the light breeze swimming off the ocean, the ocean that was still several yards away, not crashing upon our little wiccan.
"Geabheadh tu an sonas aer pighin Tir na nOg," Queen Fay's voice was but a sigh in the chorus of ocean breeze and seabird's chatter.
"But here," she swept an arm as white as creamy milk before her. "Here, you must go into poverty before finding even one pinch of joy." Her golden mane of curls swayed with the shaking of her head as if they too acknowledged the pitiful state of affairs Heather's physical dimension of life dwelled within.
She stood tall, willowy of limb. A faint gleam of ornaments could be seen in the shadowy blossom of her golden hair. Around her neck laced a band of serpents' scales.
Heather blinked to clear her sight and be sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing: never had serpents dwelled in the land of Erie; although legend liked to hand that fact over to the accomplishment of St. Patrick for having driven them all away.
Queen Fay followed the wiccan's gaze, and through the second-sight that Heather was to learn is as natural to Faery as breathing is to human beings, her thoughts were heard by the Faery.
Queen Fay’s soft voice lifted Heather's eyes to her gray ones. The Faery smiled and said, "Yes, it was always heard that Padrig drove all the serpents from beloved Erie, and that with them he had his final battle, gaining complete victory."
Her gray eyes held steady Heather's gaze. "What is not told is that Lough Derg was the last stronghold of the Sidhe, and that what this old legend really means is that Lough Derg, the Lake of Spilled Blood, is where Padrig ended his fight with the druids, and that the serpents represent the Ancient Mysteries, or Paganism." A scowl disfigured her lips. She looked out to sea.
Heather swallowed hard, realizing for the first time that an Otherworld creature had actually materialized in her sacred space—that this wasn't just a meditation, or of her imagination. Her teeth chattered together before she forced them still by clinching her jaw.
The queen sighed, absentmindedly twinning a piece of hair around a finger. Her gray eyes focused back on Heather.
