The earth holds echoes of itself.

The way land rises and falls; the flow of water as it cuts channels across landscapes. Every grain of sand holds a memory of being a mountain; raindrops remember the depths of ancient oceans. Primeval memory bounces across the lengths of existence like a really dull broken record from an old prog-rock album entitled 'Geology'.

People leave echoes, too.

We have a habit of stamping our presence into the very fabric of reality, what with our inconveniently active imaginations, dreams, and belief systems. And while an individual might not leave much of a mark on the surface of reality's metaphorical armchair, an entire culture can certainly leave behind a rather large arse impression on the leather upholstery.

Sometimes, you can find the place where the upholstery dips. With a little push, you can find yourself in the literal arse-end of nowhere – an echo of a time and place that once was, but isn't any more.

The Maidens live in once such depression. Theirs is probably a special case, what with having an extra dose of magic to help things along. Wenna and the others – all the eternal dancers – exist within their own echoes of themselves. The perfect answer to immortality, or so Wenna wanted me to believe, when I first met her. But that's a story for another time . . .

'An' what time are we actually in, twpsyn?'

Ang impatiently tapped the rock wall around us. 'Don't care much fer the reasoning of it. Jus' want to know the reason we're here.'

'Where's your sense of curiosity?' I grumbled. 'Here I am, trying to illuminate the marvels of the universe–'

'Illuminate this, would ye?' She held the lantern up, throwing our silhouettes into blue relief on the walls of the cramped chamber.

The construction itself was quite bare. The 'walls' and even ceiling were mere slabs of natural stone, apparently balanced atop each other, held together by nothing more than gravity and maybe the pressure of the earthen mound bearing down on it from all sides.

But from between those slabs hung long braids of fabric: strips of reddish wool that had been plaited together and wrapped across the rock like man-made vines. Peering closer, I could see that some braids were rotting away. They had been here a long time. This place was probably ancient even when it was still in use.

My foot kicked into a ceramic pot on the floor. It held a selection of berries and three sprigs of mistletoe.

I calmed my itchy fingers. How tempting to grab a different kind of souvenir. Neolithic fashion accessory for you, madam? How pretty these ribbons would look in your hair - probably enchanted, would bet my life on it. Or how about a piece of mistletoe that has crossed millennia? The perfect ingredient for a rare witch's brew – something to do with fate or star-crossed lovers, if I had some time to brainstorm a name for it.

Ang poked at one of the braids, which crumbled under her touch. 'What's all this old rope lyin' around for, anyway? And what about that waste of food on the floor? Careless, 'tis.'

'I imagine it's an offering, of some sort.'

'What for?'

'Some god, I expect. Or ancestral spirits. Or the earth itself. Who knows, with humans.'

'Dwp, it is.'

'Dwp?'

'Daft, gwas. Like you.'

I gave her a sidelong look. 'Didn't miners used to leave scraps of food out for coblyns?'

'Aye. To show their gratitude, like.'

'As an offering, you mean.'

'Ah. We-ell . . .'

'Not so daft now, is it?'

She grunted reluctant agreement. 'We goin' in properly or not, then?'

'You're right, let's get this over with.'

'Got a plan?'

'I thought you knew me.'

'Right, gwas.'

I heard her voice trail off behind me in a tinny sort of way as I began to unfocus. ' . . . problem is, I still never knows if that means ye do actually have a plan or not . . .'

I felt the chamber expanding. It wasn't a room, as such. The people who built it had done so with a purpose that moulded it – or rather, with such purpose that moulded reality around it. Whoever left those offerings here were leaving it for something on the other side . . .

Humans have been building portals for thousands of years. What is a tomb, if not a portal for the dead? Ancient Egyptians even built fake doors in theirs for the soul to fly through to reach the afterlife. And what is a church, if not a teleporter for prayers to your chosen deity?

And as for physical offerings to make contact across the threshold? Christians have got some weird ideas about wine and crackers, I'll say that much.

Even if you're not religious, you'd probably still leave flowers by a gravestone. As if the ghost of them could traverse the inexorable distance between you and your memory of a person who no longer exists.

These thoughts corkscrewed in my head as I unfocused, and as the world around me melted away into something sharper all these ideas convalesced into a single question: What was this place built as a portal to . . . ?

I stepped across the threshold.

The darkness lifted. Stone morphed into leaves. Packed, damp earth shifted and bloomed into a tangle of damp foliage.

This piskey glen was crowded with plant life. It was dim. The sunlight – or whatever light was overhead – barely filtered through the mass of creaking boughs that stretched skywards, each caught in a race to out-strangle the other for precious resources. Vines snaked over every available limb; ivy choked out the ground and swamped the shapes of smaller trees. Everything was green, yet struggling to survive.

I tasted humidity in the air. It was warm and dense. I wondered if this was how a rainforest felt.

Ang stepped forward and tripped on a tangle of stems. 'Cach. Ain't anyone been looking after this place?'

'Quiet,' I said urgently. 'We don't want to . . . wake anything.'

'Let's jus' get this piskey dust an' go,' she grumbled.

'Right. Any ideas where it might be?'

She shot me a scowl of what was briefly disbelief, which quickly dissolved into shrewd scorn. 'Didn't ye even think to ask Branok?'

'Did you?'

She huffed and glared pointedly elsewhere. 'This don't look pretty enough fer piskies, does it? Thought they made a place more . . . unreal.' She kicked a nearby root. 'This place is real 'n' ugly.'

The ground trembled under our feet.

'And alive,' I hissed. I trod gently through the ivy, brushing creepers and low branches away from my face. 'Let's aim for the middle of the glen. Over there: I think I can see more light in that direction.'

Ang followed me cautiously. The rustle of our movements seemed vulgar in the otherwise stillness of the glen. No birds twittered in its trees, no crickets chirped in the undergrowth.

Something crunched underfoot. I lifted my leg carefully and found the dried-up husk of a rodent – squirrel, maybe – tangled up in weeds.

'Choked to death?' I said under my breath. The bones crumbled as I nudged them.

Ang swept a mass of green tendrils aside and pointed. 'Looks like somethin' sparkly, gwas.'

'That's a good sign.' I think.

There was a definitely glittery quality to the ground cover ahead. It reminded me of the synthetic dew drops on the fairy pastures of Mên-an-Tol.

The vegetation thinned out a bit as we came closer, revealing something of a clearing, though branches still stretched and twisted so high overhead as to block out everything but a dappled light in this shady green dell.

The lack of sunlight didn't really matter, as the twinkling piskey dust made it a vision of inverted starlight instead. And there were tons of it. Heaped upon the ivy like thick snow; you'd be wading if you walked through it. Which you definitely shouldn't.

'Don't!' I yanked Ang back just in time. 'Are you crazy? Don't let it touch you. Unless you fancy turning into a frog or a tea kettle, or some other nonsense. This is proper old fairy magic. Bloody unpredictable – also bloody and unpredictable.'

'Gotcha, gwas.'

* * *

Author's Note

Episode 5, hurray! We're about one third of the way through the draft at this point - maybe more, considering the chopping and changing that will happen afterwards.

I found myself growing a bit disillusioned with this episode as I wrote it, but coming back now it feels much better than I remember - which is often the case with my own writing. I need it to sit for a while before I start to like it. I've still left a couple of comments in the text above where I'd love your opinions on some alternate phrasing.

And as always, I'd love to hear any comments you have - whether it's noting errors, suggesting improvements, or just pointing out the bits you like best. It's all incredibly useful!

Thank you all. See you next week!