A lush compilation of fantasy

illustrations and writing from

celebrated artist Charles Vess with
additional poetry and writing by:

Ari Berk
Susan Cooper
Neil Gaiman
Theodora Goss
Ursula K. Le Guin
Alice Hoffman
Gregory Maguire
John Matthews
Delia Sherman
Robin Williamson
Terri Windling
Jane Yolen
and others

&
an introduction by
Charles de Lint

Vess “paints a portrait of yearning

and appreciation for a world that
welcomes kindness, magic, whimsy,
and pastoral beauty.”
–Charles de Lint

with an
introduction by
Charles de lint
FAERIE
magazine
faeriemag.com
with an introduction by Charles de lint
 WALKING THROUGH THE LANDSCAPE OF FAERIE. INTRODUCTION
Copyright ©2016 by Charles Vess and the respective authors. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher.
to grow sharper. —W.B. Yeats
For information, address Faerie Magazine, LLC, P O Box 26452, Gwynn Oak, MD 21207.

W
For information about wholesale orders, custom editions, special sales, and premium and corporate hen I was talking to Charles Vess about my writing an introduction for this lovely
purchases, please contact Faerie Magazine at 410-265-5100 or [email protected] book, he told me a curious thing about himself, one that I immediately knew
was mistaken. He said that it had taken him a long time to have any real appreciation
for poetry. I considered arguing the point with him right then but decided to hold my
tongue and make it here instead.
I would beg to differ and say that at an early point in Charles’s life—and certainly from
when I first began corresponding with him in the late 1970s—he had already gained a deep
appreciation for poetry. He just wasn’t aware of it as such because he didn’t recognize it
in the lyricism of the raggedy lines and sometimes unruly verses that had already made a
profound impact on his life.
I’m speaking of balladry here, something that Vess has loved for as long as I’ve known
him. We used to talk all the time about the narrative ballads of the British Isles and his
own Appalachian Mountains. We just never referred to them as poetry. But that’s what
they are. Perhaps not as popular as the free verse that came into prominence from the early
part of the last century and onward, but those ballads are poetry nonetheless.
And just as the lyrics of those ballads go hand in hand with their music and performance,
so do the poetry and quotations gathered here go hand in hand with Charles’s evocative
art. The whole of the book paints a portrait of yearning and appreciation for a world that
welcomes kindness, magic, whimsy, and pastoral beauty. Neither the art nor the words
ignore the shadows that touch each of us at some point or other. But rather than wallow
in the dark and despair, they embrace hope and the idea that viewing the world with
FIRST EDITION childlike wonder is far from childish.
Charles has been discerning in his choice of words to accompany the art in this
collection, but to my mind, the real heart of the book is a reproduction of the centerpiece
mural, “Into the Green: The Art of Charles Vess,” an art exhibition that appeared in
Designed by Lisa Gill.
summer 2015 at the William King Museum of Art in Abingdon, Virginia. Surrounding
the paintings and drawings that might be expected at any such exhibit, Vess’s 150-foot
mural was impossible to miss, beckoning viewers to follow its tale from wall to wall.
ISBN-10:0-9969025-1-1
ISBN-13:978-0-9969025-1-9

5
 Painted directly on the museum’s walls, it was a huge undertaking, but there’s
no denying that Charles likes a challenge. You only have to consider “The Jack
Tales” wall, a 750-square-foot red brick bas-relief at the Southwest Virginia
Community College; or his larger than life fairy fountain, “Midsummer Play,” an
800-pound, 16-foot-tall bronze sculpture featuring Titania and other characters from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, commissioned by the Barter Theatre
in Abingdon.
The difference is those major sculptural artworks will last beyond his lifetime. But when
Vess’s 2015 museum art show finished, the mural disappeared forever—painted over and
preserved only in photographs and the scaled-down version you’ll find in these pages.
Yet, even lacking the impact of its massive appearance on the walls of the William King This one’s for Ray Bradbury and Lord Dunsany.
Museum of Art, that work distills perfectly the themes and contents of the book that you
hold in your hands, reflecting the magic contained herein with an illustrated narrative
that cuts to the heart of what Charles has to say.
It depicts the journey into the dark wood, the confrontations with blind beggars, giants,
witches, and dragons. You can see them as metaphors for the challenges we meet every
day in our lives. Or you can absorb them as simple adventures, the way a child might,
and let their lessons seep down into your soul the way that all good stories do.

The happy marriage of words and art here also highlights one of the great things about
the arts. It’s been said that the poet’s job is to make us see the familiar through new
eyes, directing our attention to things we might not consider or no longer pay attention
to because we’ve seen them so often we forget the impact they can have.
I might argue that’s the job of all art.
The verses, quotations, and paintings presented here do just that, sometimes in tandem,
sometimes giving us different perspectives. There are rich details to savor, wisdom to
ponder, and plenty of whimsy to make us smile.

Those of you already familiar with some of these paintings might find it odd to have
different texts accompanying them—that is, different from the ones that you already know
and love. But that’s the beauty of art. There’s no one story that lies in that golden space
between a work of art and what we bring to it.
We are each individuals. So we each have our own stories.
And what’s lovely about Charles Vess’s paintings is how they can jump-start those
stories of ours and send them in new directions. Charles has certainly jump-started
several of my own stories, and I am forever grateful for any opportunity to share any
page with him.

—Charles de Lint “We are the sum of all the stories we have been told.”
Summer 2016

6 7
INTO THE G�EEN
by Charles Vess

9
12 13
15
16 17
18 19
20 21
22 23
24 25
26 27
“I shut my eyes in order to see.”
—Paul Gauguin

29
 ��KING �HEAD
by Charles Vess

Looking
up a road
choked with the debris
of thumb
tap, tap, tapping
on keyboard
and
droning 24/7 news,
there is another landscape.

There,
your imagination
will be
set free.

There,
you may
smile again,
laugh again,
even cry freely again
and there
you will
savor the moment
when
you begin to tell
your own
story.

30 31
 �VERY T�EE IS THE FO�EST
by Emoke B’Racz

Trees bending under the wind

Summer dancing on the distant clouds
Leaves remembering blue

Light from the East

Illuminates the trees
Catfish keep low in the river beds
Snow comes surely from the West

Every tree is the forest

32 33
 “Fairy tales don’t tell children that
dragons exist. Children already know that.
Fairy tales tell children
that dragons can be killed.”
—G.K. Chesterton

34
 I� THE �TORY MADE OF DAW�
by Jane Yolen

“In the story made of dawn ...”

from a Diné (Navajo) Medicine Chant

Here, on the rock,

the Story Made of Dawn
touches first.

Light pours down,

a rain of it,
as if sky weeps.

Here in the grass,

the Story Made of Dawn
touches next.

It braids light
through each startled blade,
linking them for morning.

Here in the earth,

the Story Made of Dawn
touches last,

soaking into hungry ground,

giving bright life,
if only for the moment.

I touch rock, grass, earth.

Light covers me, uncovers me,
starting with my hands.

36
39
 The wild geese flying south would call to you, Lady,

we will tell your sister, Summer, that you are well.

You would reply, Yes, bring her this news—

the world is old, old, yet we have friends.

The squirrels gathering nuts, the garnet hips

of the wild roses, the birches with their white bark.

You would dress yourself in mist and early frost


to tread the autumn dances—the dance of fire

and fallen leaves, the expectation of snow.

And when your sister Winter pays a visit,

You would give her tea in a ceramic cup,

bread and honey on a wooden plate.

You would nod, as women do, and tell each other,


The world is more magical than we know.

You are not alone.

Listen: the pines are whispering their love,

and the sky herself, gray and low, bends down
to kiss you on both cheeks. Daughter, she says,
I am always with you. Listen: my winds are singing

autumn’s song.

�UTUMN’S �ONG
by Theodora Goss

You are not alone.

If they could, the oaks would bend down to take your hands,

bowing and saying, Lady, come dance with us.
The elder bushes would offer their berries to hang

from your ears or around your neck.

The wild clematis known as Traveler’s Joy
would give you its star-shaped blossoms for your crown.
And the maples would offer their leaves,
russet and amber and gold,

for your ball gown.

40 41
 “I have seen landscapes ... which, under a particular light, made me feel
that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.
Nature has that in her which compels us to invent giants: and only giants will do.”
—C.S. Lewis

44 45
 M�GIC WO�DS
by Nalugiaq
translated and edited by Edward Field

In the earliest time,

when both people and animals
lived on the earth,
a person could become an animal if
he wanted to
and an animal could become a
human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were
like magic.
The human mind had mysterious
powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen
could happen—
all you had to do was to say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was.

46 47
�ORROWSONG
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Come with me my sorrow

come away with me
where the road grows narrow
westward to the sea

where the waters darken

slow as evening falls
where no winds waken
and no voice calls

49
 �HE C�ONE
by Delia Sherman

I sit by the side of the road, comfortably planted

On a stone my buttocks have worn silky.
My garments are a peeling bark of rags,
My feet humped as roots, my hands catch
Like twigs, my hair is moss and feathers.
My eyes are a bird’s eyes, bright and sharp.
I wait for sons.

They always come, sometimes twice a day

In questing season, looking for adventure,
Fortune, fame, a magic flower, love.
Only the youngest sons will find it:
The others might as well have stopped at home
For all the good I’ll do them.

It’s the second sons who break my heart,

Anxious at their elder brothers’ failure,
Stuck with the second-best horse, the second-best sword,
The second-best road to disaster. Often I wish
A second son would share his bread with me,
Wrap his cloak around my body, earn
The princess and the gold.

That’s one wish. The second (I’m allowed three)

Is that a daughter, any daughter at all—
Youngest, oldest—seeking her fortune,
A kingdom to rule, a life to call her own
Would sit and talk with me, give me her bread
And her ear. Perhaps (third wish) she’d ask
After my kin, my home, my history.
Ah then, I’d throw off my rags and dance in the road
Young as I never was, and free.

52
 I still gasp in delight when I
remember the sleigh beginning to
rise again high above the snow-
covered field. Below it, the small
figures cheered and tossed their
tall red hats far into the air.

Of course, Morningstar took up

her accustomed station, flying
before Father Christmas.
Her gentle light guided the
sleigh with its precious contents
through all the clouds heavy
with snow, tickling the night
around them with color.

And just before they disappeared

into those clouds, I saw our
Tomten raise his arms and
cry with delight at the world
stretched out so far below him.

–from “Father Christmas and the

Tomten,” by Charles Vess

54 55
My kiss is cold, no one tells you the truth about
that. But if you mind you don’t say. Love
with me is like a dream you whisper, and soon
enough the water around us is hot as tap water.
Nothing is cold. I can’t even remember the
ocean. What is coral? What are pearls?
Nothing but stones in the sea.
–from “How to Fall in Love With
a Mermaid,” by Alice Hoffman

57
 WITCH WOR�
by Neil Gaiman

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree

She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.

The tree was the oldest that I’d ever seen

Its trunk flowed like liquid. It dripped with age.
But every September its fruit stained the green
As scarlet as harlots, as red as my rage.

The clocks whispered time which they caught in their gears

They crept and they chattered, they chimed and they chewed.
She fed them on minutes. The old ones ate years.
She feared and she loved them, her wild clocky brood.

She sold me a storm when my anger was strong

And my hate filled the world with volcanoes and laughter
I watched as the lightnings and wind sang their song
And my madness was swallowed by what happened after.

She sold me three sorrows all wrapped in a cloth.

The first one I gave to my enemy’s child.
The second my woman made into a broth.
The third waits unused, for we reconciled.

She sold calm seas to the mariners’ wives

Bound winds with silk cords so the storms could be tied there,
The women at home lived much happier lives
Till their husbands returned, and their patience be tried there.

The witch hid her life in a box made of dirt,

As big as a fist and as dark as a heart
There was nothing but time there and silence and hurt
While the witch watched the waves with her pain and her art.

(But he never came back … he never came back.)

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree

She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.

58 59
 �HE GARDE�
by Ari Berk

From the First Days we were gardeners.

Even before we became aware
of what was man, which was woman,
we were, all, husbands of earth.
From these First Days we came to know
that when God showed love to earthfast folk
he made them the gift of a garden.
And so those who still work the earth know:
keep a garden and see the world with love.
When we see the world with love
Spring and Eden come again.
Thrice blessed is the soil amended
by the holding and turning of joined hands.
Nothing need be wasted:
even eggshells, coffee grounds, last night’s salad ...
all will come to riches, sifting memory into the loam.
The Garden of the World holds all
the fruits and flowers, nettles and thistles.
Petal and thorn it goes.
The figures of plants, their leaves and lives,
show us the world made small, for what they need
we need: light and air, sustenance and care.
The Garden is our own selves,
a greening vow between us and the world.
Recall the hope of Spring
and the hopefulness that attends
all things framed by season.
And though the ground lie fallow
through a winter of distraction,
through pest, or through drought,
remember Spring, and see the world with love.
For then, rising from its sleeping roots,
your vow is restored,
lives and breathes,
becomes a child again,
glad to feel the sun upon its face at dawn.

60 61
 I WILL GO �OW
by Charles Vess

I will go now
into the wood
into the green, green wood
and seek there
something rich and strange,
fecund with life.

All there in that wood praise

the sun,
the light,
the rain,
the breeze that carries
seed to mate with earth,
settling under
layers of rot, of mold
of leaf rack,
to be reborn as
fruit and flower,
briar and thorn,
berry and nut.

All silently trumpet

their heaving,
tangled
desire
for life.

As do I.
As do you.
As do we all.

62 63
 �ORD OF THE D�NC�
by Aidan Kelly, C. Taliesin Edwards, and Ann Cass

I danced in the morning when the world was begun,

I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun;
I was called from the darkness by the song of the earth,
I joined in the singing and she gave me birth.

Dance then wherever you may be!

I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you on, wherever you may be,
I will lead you in the dance, said he!

I sleep in the kernel and I dance in the rain,

I dance in the wind, and through the waving grain,
And when you cut me down, I care nothing for the pain—
In the Spring I’ll be Lord of the Dance again!

I see the maidens laughing as they dance in the sun,

I count the fruits of the harvest, one by one,
I know the storm is coming. But the grain is all stored,
As I sing of the dance of the Lady and the Lord.

We dance ever slower as the leaves fall and spin,

And the sound of the Horn is the wailing of the wind;
The earth is wrapped in stillness and we move in a trance,
But we hold fast to our faith in the dance.

They cut me down, but I leap up high!

I am life that will never, never die.
I’ll live in you and you’ll live in me—
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he!

The moon in her phases and the tides of the sea,

The movement of the Earth, and the seasons that will be
Are right for the dancing and a promise through the years—
The Dance goes on through joy and tears.

Dance then wherever you may be!

I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you on, wherever you may be,
I will lead you in the dance, said he!

64 65
 �HE �HORTEST DAY
by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees,
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing, behind us—listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight
This shortest day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year, and every year.
Welcome Yule!

66 67
 �HIS IS THE W�D
by Jane Yolen

This is the wood.

This is the dark wood,
This is the dark wood I must cross.

This is the path,

This is the hard path.
This is the hard path I must walk.

This is the rain.

This is the long rain.
This is the long rain I must bear.

This is the beast.

This is the fell beast.
This is the fell beast I must help.

Dark and hard, long and fell,

This is the story I must tell.

68 69
 ON� OF THOS� DAYS

by Theodora Goss

It is one of those days when I feel completely out of step

with the world, when I am convinced

I should be somewhere different ...

Walking through a forest of tall trees, preferably maples


because it is autumn, and their leaves would create

a carpet, maybe even a path

of red and yellow. And I could follow it,

in the belief that I was going somewhere.

What has happened to my life?

My moments are measured by clocks,


not by the chirping of crickets, or the call

of birds in the underbrush at the edge of the forest,

not by the movements of water

as it falls over rocks into a pool.

Not by the sun sinking lower.

Although I know, I can feel, that it is all

falling: the leaves, the sun,

the running water into the still water.

And then the birds and crickets falling silent.

I can feel it even though in my efficient life


where the clocks are marking time,

all the minutes are the same: one after another,

in equal intervals. Still, outside my window,

behind the reflected electric lights,

slowly darkness comes,
like a benediction. And I feel

once again, that I was born elsewhere

and have, still, elsewhere to go ...
where beneath tall trees, slowly the leaves

and evening are falling together.

70 71
 B�OSSOMS AND B��MS
by David Winship

On the waft of morning mist,

the morning dew freshens the day
as birds’ morning songs jumble
in a boiling pot of notes.

The heavy sweet scent of lilacs’ bloom

takes me to where I once lived and
the white four-petaled flower on gnarled limbs
takes me to the dogwood days of my youth.

Daytime descends,
where limbs lace and
treetop branches brush the blush
of the evening sky.

As moments turn to days and

seasons to years,
memories remain of life
passed into past.

What’s ahead
when the blossoms and blooms will once again
sweeten my nose and caress my eye and
sunrise and moonset bookend the morning sky?

72 73
 �ALIESI�
by John Matthews

“I am a Bard,” answered the child. “And I hold the keys to all

knowledge, both past, present and future.” Then he sang this song:

Behold a Bard
Who has not chanted yet,
But will sing soon enough.
By the end of his song
He will know all the wisdom of stars.

Gwion kept the cauldron boiling,

Gwion of small merit
Shall outlast the ages.
I am Taliesin—
I will defend true knowledge
To the end of time.

I am a master of stars,
I know the mind of trees,
I know good and evil.
I know the number of the winds and streams,
I know size of the earth.

I know why cows are horned,

Why milk is white,
Why holly is green,
Why the goat is bearded,
Why the wheel is round.

I have been dead.

I have been alive.
I am Taliesin—
I will defend true knowledge
To the end of time.

74 75
�HE �IGHT JOURNEY
by Terri Windling

Go by coombe, by candle light, to lead you to the one who waits,

by moonlight, starlight, stepping stone, who sits and waits upon the tor,
and step o’er bracken, branches, briars, he waits and watches, wondering
and go tonight, and go alone, if you’re the one he’s waiting for;
go by water, go by willow, he waits by dawn, by dusk, by dark,
go by ivy, oak and ash, by sun, by rain, by day, by night,
and rowan berries red as blood, his hair as black as ravens’ wings,
and breadcrumbs, stones, to mark the path; his eyes of amber, skin milk white,
find the way by water’s whisper, his skin tattooed with spiral lines
water rising from a womb beneath a mask of wood and leaves
of granite, peat, of summer heat, and polished stone and sun-bleached bone,
to slake your thirst and fill the coombe beneath a shirt of spiders’ weave,
and tumble over moss and stone his wrists weighted with silver bands
and feed the roots of ancient trees and copper braids tarnished to green,
and call to you: go, now, tonight, he waits for you, unknown and yet
by water, earth, phyllomancy, familiar from forgotten dreams;
by candle flame, by spirit-name, you dream and stir upon your bed
by spells, by portents, myth and song, and toss and turn among the sheets,
by drum beat, heart beat, earth pulsing the wind taps at the window glass
beneath your feet, calling you home, and water tumbles through the leat
calling you back, calling you through and through the garden, through the wood,
the water, wood, the waste, the wild, and over moss and over stone
the hills where Dartmoor ponies pass, and tells you: go, by candle light,
and black-faced sheep, a spectral child, and go tonight, and go alone;
a fox with pale unnatural eyes, he’s sent you dreams, he’s left you signs,
an owl, a badger, ghostly deer he’s left you feathers, beads and runes,
with horns of star light, candle light so go, tonight, by candle light,
to guide the way, to lead you here, by ash and oak, by wood, by coombe.
 “Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed.
What would be left to strive for if everything were known?”
—Charles de Lint
80 81
 �HOMAS THE RHYME�
As told by Robin Williamson

The ancient thorn they called the Eildon through weel or woe as may chance to be” returned speak of buildings more beautiful But this pleased Thomas ill:
Tree was always one of Thomas’s favorite she mounted on her milk white steed than churches or castles, yet neither cruel nor
haunts. He’d take his harp and while away and Thomas he louped on behind holy, but made for the dance that heeds not My tongue’s my ain, my tongue’s my ain
a summer’s afternoon by the waters of Bogel and aye whenever the bridles rang night or day. Music plays there, of gittern, a gudely gift you wad gie to me
Burn on the slopes of the three-peaked the steed gaed faster than the wynd psaltery, lute, and rebec but above all the I durst neither bargain nor speak in hall
Eildons. It was always known as an uncanny melting strains and merry notes of the harp, nor seek for grace from fair Lady
place, a place where fortune might wink or And somehow they rode into the hill itself, feasting without satiety, pleasure without end.
scowl. The very place a poet would choose or into the silence from which all things are Thomas waited always at the Lady’s right Yet even as he spoke, Thomas found himself
when at his verses. A feared and honored born. They crossed the river that runs with hand, passing her this or that as she required. walking towards Earston in a break of day.
place, as the bards relate. the blood that is shed on Earth. And a handsome manservant to her he made, Never a lie could he speak from that time
On a day of days, the Lady came—riding her Now when they reached the far bank of that listening, you may be sure, to music and song, forth. His prophecies became famous in all the
white horse between the worlds, she that was river, the Lady’s beauty was restored to her a the like of which were never made by Adam’s lands of Scotland, and many were repeated in
Elfland’s Queen—to hear the Rhymer’s music hundredfold. They rode out into a green and kin. the Border Country. “True Thomas” was the
for herself. misty landscape where the way branched into Then the Lady said; “Now you must leave.” name he gained in many long years.
three. “How can that be?” said Thomas. “Scarcely As a sign at the last that his worldly work was
her skirt was o’ the grass green silk a day since we came here.” done, there came in the gloaming through
her mantle o’ the velvet fine And she said: “Ah, but seven full years on Earth have Earlston to his door-side, a pair of deer. None
at ilka tett o’ her horse’s mane “o see ye not yon narrow road passed,” said she. “And every seven years could drive them away. Neither dogs nor
hung fifty siller bells and nine that’s a’ beset wi’ thorn and briar? we must pay a tithe to Hell. If you were arrows would harm them. A hart and a hind,
that is the Path to Righteousness to stay I fear the Fiend would choose you. as white as the white thorn flowers. Then
And she that was more beautiful than frost and few there be that there aspire You’ve served me faithfully. I give you this as Thomas arose, leaving his guests at table, and
or firelight gave him good warning. “Harp your wages. I give you a tongue that will followed these white deer into the pure and
and carp,” she said, “sing and play, but if you and see ye not yon wide smooth road never lie.” gathering dark.
dare kiss my lips, sure of your body I will be.” that winds across the lily heaven?
that is the Path to Wickedness
But he said, though many ca’ it the Road to Heaven
“Betide me wel, betide me woe
That weird sall never daunten me.” and see ye not yon bonny, bonny road
that winds across the ferny brae?
And he kissed her rosy lips, all in the shade that is the path to fair Elfland
of the Eildon Tree. In that moment her where you and I this night maun gae”
beauty changed to foulness, her golden hair
to straggles of grey, her royal clothes to filthy Setting off on that bonniest of road, she
rags, her face grew skull thin and leaden pale. gave him this advice for his soul’s sake, that
She beckoned him, and he needs must follow. he would answer none but herself while he
was in that land, that was before the world.
“Now ye maun gang Thomas,” she said Words are weak to tell of Elfland’s beauty.
“ye maun rise and gang wi’ me But it is said that orchards there are of every
and ye maun serve me seven years fruit, gardens of every flower. Those that have

84 85
 DEIRDR� OF THE �ORROWS
Retold by Charles Vess

The story of Deirdre is known as the Third Great Sorrow of Irish Storytelling.

At her birth, on a day of days, the Druid priests of the kingdom of King
Conchobhar prophesied that so great would be her beauty that only tragedy would
come with it.

And so it was as they said: With each passing year Deirdre grew even more
beautiful. When, in the passage of time, she was no longer a child but a maiden full
grown, the king of all Ireland looked on her and could contain his lust no longer.
He decreed that Deirdre would be his bride, for in those days in Ireland, your
possessions counted for much and to have the most beautiful woman in all the land
as your wife would make Conchobhar an even greater man than he already was.

Deirdre, however, had fallen in love with the king’s greatest warrior, Naoise, and
as luck or fate would have it, he with her. Together with his two brothers they fled
Ireland and went (some have said) to live in the Highlands of Scotland. Life there
was idyllic for them until King Conchobhar sent his emissaries, who with guile and
treachery lured them back to the Irish court.

Once there, King Conchobhar had Naoise and his brothers slain, intending at
last to possess the beautiful Deirdre. But she, standing over her dead lover’s body
and watching a triumphant Conchobhar advance toward her, drew out a silver
dagger and, plunging it into her breast, killed herself.

So ends the story of Deirdre.

87
“Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood
than in any truth that is taught in life.”
–Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

89
 �HE GETTING OF �XCALIBU�
Retold by Charles Vess

And as they rode, Arthur said, “I have no sword.”

“Be not troubled,” Merlin said unto his companion, “I know of a goodly sword
that shall be yours.”
So they rode on till they came to a lake of broad, fair water and in the midst of
the lake Arthur saw an arm clothed in white samite, holding aloft a fair sword in
its hand.
“Lo!” said Merlin. “There is the sword of which I spoke.”
“What manner of being holdeth it above the water?” said Arthur.
“That is the Lady of the Lake,” said Merlin. “Within this very lake is a rock, and
therein that rock is as fair a place as any on earth or beyond it, rich and passing
strange. If you speak well to The Lady she will gift you with that sword.”
Then, stepping lightly o’er the water The Lady came nye to them and spoke, “The
sword is mine, its name is Excalibur and if ye will pledge me a goodly gift when I
ask it of thee, ye shall have it as your own.”
“By my faith,” said Arthur, “I will give you whatever gift ye will hereafter ask
of me.”
“Well spoke!” said the blessed damosel, “go ye then into yonder barge, and row
yourself to the sword, and take it and the scabbard as well. I will then ask my gift of
thee when the time is fit.”
So Sir Arthur and Merlin alighted and tied their horses to two trees, and went
into the ship, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur took
it up by the handles, and took it with him, and the arm and the hand went back
under the water.
Sir Arthur looked on the sword, and saw that it was a goodly gift of great power.
“Whichever you liketh better,” said Merlin, “the sword or the scabbard?”
“I like better the sword,” said Arthur.
“Ye are then most unwise,” said Merlin, “for the scabbard is worth ten of the
swords, for whiles ye have the scabbard upon you, ye shall never lose no blood, be
ye never so sore wounded; therefore keep well the scabbard always with you.”
When they had returned to the shore The Lady was no longer to be seen.
So they rode on into Carlion, and when they had come there his knights were
passing glad. And when they heard of his adventures, they marvelled that their king
would put his person in adventure as other poor knights did.

92
 “I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind.
Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”
—John Lennon

94 95
 �IME IN THE FO�EST
by Gregory Maguire

The forest has a floor and a ceiling

But no walls.

The floor is the past; a certain feeling

That consoles and appalls.

The ceiling is the limitless time to come

No one can reach.

The walls, which don’t exist, are some

Of the ways our days conceal and reveal
Differently, each for each.

97
 Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Excerpt from “The Stolen Child”

by William Butler Yeats

100 101
 �FTERWORD

A fter looking through the book that you hold right now in your hands, you might be forgiven
for thinking, If this is an art book, why are there so many words in it?
Why indeed?
There’s an easy answer to that question, though. For me, art and writing are one and the same—
different disciplines that lead to the same ultimate destination: a well-told story. And that story,
whether it employs only art or pure text or a combination of both to tell its narrative, is my gift to
you, the reader.
Still, you might be asking, “Why all the poetry?”
Well, I guess it’s time to confess something: As a young boy I never had any love for the rhythms
and rhymes in any poem that came my way. Just one look at all those seemingly endless stanzas
marching down a page of type would make me so impatient I’d just skip over them looking for
“the good stuff.” And at that age, the good stuff would mean the hardcore action and drama that
permeated Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales or J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Not until
I was years older did I bother to read any of the numerous poetic “interruptions” in the professor’s
epic tale.
This reckless impulse continued for far longer than was good for me until, a few years later, I
fell under the sway of Ray Bradbury, a writer whose prose is as close to poetry as any text could ever be.
Soon after that, my interest in Scottish and English ballads finally put a large gap in that self-imposed
wall. Of course, at first I didn’t call those songs poetry and I still thumbed my nose at collections of the
same, but that wall had definitely begun to crumble.
It collapsed completely when I came to understand that art, writing, and poetry (at least the kind
that I respond to) were all a kind of prayer to beauty when most of our society casually casts aside that
impulse in order to worship at the altar of the “real.”
After many years of drawing, writing, and sculpting I began to understand that the art that
pleased me most, that made me excited about producing my own, made conscious use of what
I began to call “poetic space”—that is, a liminal area where the artist and the viewer (or reader)
actively collaborate with each other in order to complete a given narrative. Perhaps it’s the space
between two words or lurking just behind the haze of a landscape that suggests that there is more
there than meets the eye of the viewer or reader but leaves the particular details to be filled in by them.
WHICH WOL� After all, it’s the questions that move us, not the answers.
Traditional Native American story retold by Charles Vess It is that collaboration between a work of art and its viewer that I find both exciting and intensely
rewarding.
In this book, though, I’ve attempted to broaden that impulse by selecting other creative voices and
Once there was a people that lived in the west. placing their work next to carefully selected pieces of my art. In most cases, neither those words nor
the picture itself were developed to illustrate one another, both being conceived at separate times
The land around them provided everything that they needed to live and they were content. and places.
Yet every day two wolves came amongst them, demanding to be fed. The people knew, My hope is that by selecting art and text that share similar sensibilities and placing them side by
without asking, that both animals were essential to the fullness of their world. side, that juxtaposition will encourage yet another form of collaboration—one that this time involves
three distinct elements: my art, a selected text, and the viewer. In the best of all possible worlds, this
One wolf though was filled with violence, cruelty, and anger and the other with joy and hope.
shared space with its inevitable aesthetic friction between what is said and what is shown will serve
Each day the people of that tribe would decide which wolf they would feed and how much to create an entirely new tale from the bones of the old within the imagination of my readers.
they would feed it. By their choice each determined what kind of world they would live in. So then, tell me a story.
As it is today, every one of us must still make that same choice.

Always.
Charles Vess
Abingdon, Virginia, 2016
Which wolf will you feed?

102
 ART
Page number
1 Gathering the Worlds, ©2013 (detail) Colored Ink
2&3 My Fox Friend, ©2013 Colored Ink
5 A Sleeping Princess, ©2012 Pen & Ink
9 - 27 Into the Green, ©2016 Watercolor Pencil
29 The Green Lady, ©2009 Colored Pencil
30 & 31 Companions to the Moon, ©2004 Colored Ink
32 The Goblin Market, ©2014 Pen & Ink
33 Spring Faeries, ©2015 Colored Ink
AUTHORS 34 & 35 Questions in the Wildwood, ©2009 Colored Ink
37 Jack in the Green, ©2013 Colored Ink
Page number
38 A Song of Tree and Stone, ©2009 Colored Ink
8 - 27 “Into the Green,” text ©2015 Charles Vess 39 There Once Was a Tree, ©2011 Colored Ink
30 “Looking Ahead,” text ©2016 Charles Vess 40 A Gift for the Tree, ©2014 Colored Ink
33 “Every Tree Is the Forest,” text ©2016 Emoke B’racz 42 & 43 A Path Through the Wood, ©2013 Colored Ink
36 “In the Story Made of Dawn,” text ©2016 Jane Yolen 44 Trust Your Story, ©2009 Colored Ink
40 “Autumn’s Song,” text ©2016 Theodora Goss 45 The Goblin Tree, ©2009 Colored Ink
46 “Magic Words,” text ©2016 Nalugiaq 46 & 47 A Chance Meeting in the Greenwood, ©2015 Colored Ink
translated and edited by Edward Field 48 & 49 By the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, ©2009 Pen & Ink
49 “Sorrowsong,” text ©2016 Ursula K. Le Guin 50 & 51 Mapping Instructions, ©2009 Colored Ink
52 “The Crone,” text ©2016 Delia Sherman 53 The Earth Witch, ©1978 Colored Ink
55 “Father Christmas and the Tomten” (excerpt), ©2015 Charles Vess 54 & 55 Father Christmas and the Tomten, ©2011 Colored Ink
57 “How to Fall in Love With a Mermaid” (excerpt), ©2011 Alice Hoffman 56 The Cats of Tangledwood Forest, ©2013 Colored Ink
59 “Witch Work,” text ©2016 Neil Gaiman 57 How to Fall in Love With a Mermaid, ©2011 Colored Ink
61 “The Garden,” text ©2016 Ari Berk 58 A Bounty of Apples, ©2009 Colored Ink
62 “I Will Go Now,” text ©2016 Charles Vess 60 The Prince of Spring, ©2015 Colored Ink
65 “Lord of the Dance,” text ©2016 Aidan Kelly, 63 The Summer King and His Bride of Flowers, ©2015 Colored Ink
C. Taliesin Edwards, and Ann Cass 64 The Corn King, ©2000 Colored Ink
66 “The Shortest Day,” text ©2016 Susan Cooper 67 The Winter King, ©2015 Colored Ink
69 “This is the Wood,” text ©2016 Jane Yolen 68 & 69 Duet, a Door Into Summer, ©2012 Colored Ink
71 “One of Those Days,” text ©2016 Theodora Goss 70 Come Out and Play, ©2008 Colored Ink
72 “Blossoms and Blooms,” text ©2016 David Winship 72 Sunrise and Moonrise Bookend the Morning Sky, ©2015 Colored Ink
74 “Taliesin,” text ©2016 John Matthews 73 The Faery Reel, ©2003 Colored Ink
76 & 78 “The Night Journey,” text ©2016 Terri Windling 75 Taliesin, ©2008 Colored Ink
84 “Thomas the Rhymer,” text ©2016 Robin Williamson 76-78 The Reconciliation of the Sun and of the Moon, ©2011 Colored Ink
87 “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” text ©2016 Charles Vess 80 Seven Kinds of Ice, ©2014 Colored Ink
92 “The Getting of Excalibur,” text ©2016 Charles Vess 81 Our Winter Revels, ©2015 Colored Ink
96 “Time in the Forest,” text ©2016 Gregory Maguire 82 & 83 True Thomas, ©2007 Colored Ink
100 “The Stolen Child” (excerpt), ©1889 William Butler Yeats 86 Deirdre of the Sorrows, ©1992 Charcoal
102 “Which Wolf,” text ©2016 Charles Vess 88 A Woodland Tryst, ©2010 Colored Ink
89 A Gift From the Spring, ©2001 Watercolor
90 & 91 Gathering the Worlds, ©2013 Colored Ink
93 A Once and Future King, ©2009 Colored Ink
94 Sarah Jane and Root, ©2014 Colored Ink
95 The Witch’s Cauldron, ©2009 Colored Ink
97 Baba Yaga’s Hut, ©2015 Colored Ink
98 & 99 Lillian and the Circle of Cats, ©2013 Colored Ink & Digital Media
100 & 101 The Stolen Child, ©2013 Colored Pencil
102 The Beastly Bride, ©2009 Colored Ink
 A lush compilation of fantasy
illustrations and writing from
celebrated artist Charles Vess with
additional poetry and writing by:

Ari Berk
Susan Cooper
Neil Gaiman
Theodora Goss
Ursula K. Le Guin
Alice Hoffman
Gregory Maguire
John Matthews
Delia Sherman
Robin Williamson
Terri Windling
Jane Yolen
and others

&
an introduction by
Charles de Lint

Vess “paints a portrait of yearning

and appreciation for a world that
welcomes kindness, magic, whimsy,
and pastoral beauty.”
–Charles de Lint

with an
introduction by
Charles de lint