Gnarled bark against his back. A crush of dry leaves underneath him. And golden red light filtering through his eyelids. Slowly, Robird came once more to his senses.

He wondered idly where he was, why and what the time could be. With a grunt, he opened his eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again, shielding them against the setting sun. Its after-image kept on dancing at the centre of his vision.

Dancing...

With a start, he sat bolt upright and looked around. There he was, on top of the hill at the foot of the gigantic old tree. Just like before he had gone into its realm, its court of oaks under the hill.

Or had he even? He looked up, puzzling. He had been sitting up in the tree. Yes, right there. And there had been an opening... Right there. But it looked just as usual now.

Was it all a dream? Had he fallen asleep and then tumbled off his perch, onto the ground? He felt himself for breaks, bumps or scratches. Nothing. He was completely unscathed. Could he have climbed down in his sleep?

He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to dislodge some memory that had stuck in the recesses of his mind. Surely he had been into that other realm... but for how long?

Frowning, he squinted at the sun. Still setting, barely lower than he remembered from before this... dream, or what was it. Surely he couldn't have slept an entire day away?

Suddenly he blanched, remembering tales. Legends of people visiting the Otherfolk, in their halls in the Otherwhere, often under a hill... emerging years later to find their homes and families gone, sometimes driven mad... To be sure, none of them mentioned oaks. But what if...?

With a jolt, he turned on his heels, skidded down the slope without heeding stains nor scratches and ran all the way home.

Nearing home under deepening dusk, he slowed to a halt and squinted ahead. There, the house was still standing, looking just the same as far as he could tell. Faint light filtered through cracks between shutters, where what warmth was to be had indoors inside slowly escaped to lose itself to autumn chills. Two shadows of people were moving in from the fields - that would be his elder brothers, Enwil and Wilden, he thought with relief, before his misgivings whispered to him that other villeins could also have two sons working afield for as long as daylight would let them.

Only one way to find out. Robird swallowed hard and walked on.

As he drew nearer, the shapes disappeared behind the house, then emerged once more around the corner. His heart pounded and he did not trust his voice to call out to them.

"Ho, Robird?" the familiar voice of Enwil called out. "That you?"

"How's the day been?" Wilden added in a weary rasp.

Grateful for the dark hiding the tears of relief finally flooding his eyes, Robird wondered how to answer to that. How had the day been, indeed? A strangled chuckle escaped him before he could contain it and the shapes stopped.

"Anything the matter? Robird?" Enwil asked, an edge of concern creeping into his voice. Robird came closer and waved it away, clearing his throat.

"Just swallowed a fly is all," he croaked. "I'm fine. You?"

Wilden stepped up and pounded his back to help dislodge the made-up fly.

"Same as always," he drawled. "All work and no play. As opposed to you traipsing away to gawk at the landlord's daughter all the time."

"Huh," Robird quipped back. "Care to trade? I hear you love the digging of ditches more than the sight of fair women."

The sheer ordinaryness of their familiar banter helped him to regain his balance. His visit to the Oak king's demesne began to feel ever more like a dream and he decided to leave it at that for the while. Time enough to ruminate on it all tomorrow, on homage day.

Perhaps their house deity, Frodha of the Earth's bounty, could provide answers if he prayed sincerely to Her? On the other hand, She was a goddess of the tilled fields. What would she know of beings of the wild forest?

Perhaps he ought to visit the hunter's, where they worshipped Skëadh, tomorrow after homage?

As his brothers lay their arms about his shoulders and drew him on, however, he left all such thoughts for now and went inside for homage eve's family communion.

The cottage on the very edge of the forest looked as if it had grown there. Indeed, part of it had - the near left corner was cunningly knotted onto the trunk of a sturdy old rowan, without a single nail harming the tree. That apart, many of the logs were harvested after a storm that had swept through forest years ago, when the hunter and his wife were young. They retained many branches stocking out to the sides, they were overgrown with moss and lichen, birds had nested in a few places, and around it edible plants, herbs and flowers, though almost bare or gone at this time of year, grew seemingly haphazardly.

Robird knew there was nothing haphazard about it. Wul Hunter and Vydis Carver knew plants and beasts alike as no one else within a week's march. The plants grew exactly where they would thrive best in this place. And the dried meat and hides hanging from the branches jutting from the walls were carefully culled from what the forest could spare - no doe with calves would end up here, nor any promising young male fox wandering in with fresh blood.

Wul and Vydis were sitting outside, soaking up the meagre warmth of an autumn sun a little past noon. They had lain down their work and watched him approaching. It would take some truly inspired stealth to come near their cottage without them knowing it. As soon as they recognised him, they rose and nodded, both with the same vague smile.

"Been a while, wildwonderer," Wuller said as they gripped forearms in greeting. Vydis said nothing as she did the same. They weren't much for talking.

"About time then," Robird replied. With a gesture, the couple invited him to sit with them as they took up their work again, Wul inspecting his snares, Vydis carving a figurine of what looked like becoming a deer out of a piece of rosewood root.

"Here to see our children, me or Skëadh?" Wuller asked after a brief silence which Robird knew better than breaking.

"All," Robird replied, "but in the other order. If I may."

Wul merely gestured with his head to the door. "We'll be here." Vydis caught his eyes with another smile as he rose and walked past, smiling back.

The door was ajar, but Robird knocked all the same before entering, in case Ylwi or Arnir were at home. They weren't, and he entered, turning straight left towards his second deity.

The Skëadh idol on the corner rowan was one of Vydis' masterpieces. Not carved out of the living wood, of course, but salvaged from a storm-broken branch of it. Still, it was so cleverly fastened to the trunk that it might have been there from the beginning. 

Around it, four straw cushions were placed, still there after the family's dawn homage. If Robird asked, there would be a fifth for the dusk homage. These were Skëadh's hours, just as noon was Frodha's. Coming here now meant that the Goddess might be sleepy, but Robird nevertheless preferred to beseech Her for answers now, alone. If She didn't provide, maybe She would still hear and he could stay for homage to see if She could tell him something then.

At least this was a wild-grown rowan, Her own tree, and he had always felt Her presence strongly here. Some people planted rowans to make jam out of the berries, said to bring health. They called them Frodha's rowans, though they were of a kind with the wild-grown. Wul called such trees Skëadh-reft rowans and Robird was certain Vydis would too, if ever she talked of them. 

Before kneeling, Robird took a moment to glance up above the idol, where a hatch under the roof and some handy branch stumps on the logs of the wall provided a quick way to the generous crown of the tree. That hatch was the foremost reason for Robird's friendship with Ylwi and Arnir. On his first visit, some ten summers ago, he had watched wide-eyed as the two children scampered in and out of it, racing each other to the top of the tree and back. As mother had called him to leave for home, he hadn't budged. It took only a little beseeching to let him stay awhile and join them in the tree.

Ylwi was a summer older than Robird, Arnir a summer younger. They had understood each other perfectly from the start and Robird had become a frequent guest in the hunter's cottage. Wul soon had a nickname for him, just as he had for his own children. At first, Robird had thought Wul called him "wildwanderer" and protested that he didn't know his way about the forest. Wuller had smiled and patted his shoulder.

"Sure you don't wander the wild, lad. But walking through it, you see the wonder of it."

After that, Robird had realised the truth of that and begun to not only see, but seek the wonders that Skeagh offered for the seeing eye. For a short while he had dreamt of becoming a hunter like Wul, but when he had seen the dead fowl in a snare for the first time, he had known otherwise. Wul's apologies for the robbed life and thanks for the life it would give helped some, but not enough for Robird to feel at ease with being the robber.

He lowered his eyes again to the Skëadh idol. He had been brought up to thank Frodha for every scrap of food on the table. But when he had realised that some of it had been bartered from the hunter and came out of the forest, he had insisted they give thanks to Skëadh as well and none had objected.

His slightly moistened eyes fixed on the serene face of the idol, he knelt.

After looking around to ensure that he was still alone, he bowed to her and laid his offering in the bowl nestled in the rowan's roots on the bare floor of the corner; a sprig of wild rowan berries along with a handful of acorns carefully held in a large, yellow chestnut leaf wound about with strips of willow bark. Then he whispered his plea.

"O Skëadh, Mother of all things wild, please hear me. I have..."

He paused for a moment, unsure of how to explain what had happened. He had rehearsed many different ways of putting it on the way. Now they all seemed confused.

Then again, the forest was a confusing place. He sighed and went on at a ramble.

"I went to the old oak tree on the hill, the King. He talked to me and I went into the hill. There he was, like a king, a man, with a court and a princess. He wanted me to marry the princess and sire a son with her, who would help us both. She... well, she wasn't a she but she looked like... oh, I guess you know oaks better than I do."

He lost himself and struggled for a moment before finding the thread again.

"She didn't want to. I sang for her and then she said I should come looking for her on midwinter's eve and sing again. Then again on spring's evenday. And maybe she'd make a song of me and agree to marry... if marriage it would be, but at least agree to the whole thing."

There, that was the matter as plain as he could put it. But what was the question now? What answer did he need from Skëadh?

"I... think I would like to do that," he started, tentatively. "Though I'm afraid. I probably shouldn't. She's some sort of otherfolk, after all. A wild being. And I'm not really wild, as you know, though I love all that is. And also..." he frowned. "I'm not sure if it's really real. It might have been a dream. But I didn't fall out of the tree. I don't think I would climb down in my sleep. But..."

But what? Had he made his question clear to Her? It didn't feel like it. He sat back up and sought Her eyes, wooden yet somehow alive, courtesy of Vydis' skill. Once more then, short and sweet as mother always said whenever he was called to explain himself.

"So, O Skëadh, Mother of all things wild. Was it real? And if it was, ought I to go find her and sing for her?"

That was it, nothing more to be said. Ignoring the discomfort in his knees, he sat stock still, watching Her eyes, waiting for an answer or a dismissal.

Time dragged or flew, he could never tell which in the hunter's cottage. His vision started to swim and his back to sag. Then between one blink and the next, he saw on Her face, as clearly as in broad daylight, the face of the Oak princess.

He gasped and the image flickered out. The idol was smiling - it always was, of course, that contented, enigmatic smile Vydis had given Her, but was the smile suddenly encouraging as well, or was it only a trick of the light or of his mind?

Whatever it was, he took it as an answer. What little doubt remained in him of the reality of yesterday's events was drowned out by the sudden conviction that it was. His heart careened and his head spun. Suddenly he was in the grip of that fearning again.

One question remained. Now if indeed he had been given this offer, this promise of fame and fortune... was it a wise course to follow?

No, he corrected himself. It was most certainly not a wise course to follow. Dangerous, reckless, perhaps even doomed. He would be a fool to rush in. But the question remained. The choice between the wise course and the foolish.

It would take someone else's wisdom to help him work that out. He bowed to Skëadh once more in silent thanks, then rose and walked out into the pale sunlight.