Pan and Puck

In Which We Meet Two Sisters In Their Bedroom In The Dead Of Night

Once there were two very little girls who were best friends and sisters. Though I do not know if these are there true names, they were regularly called Cheveux Fous and Pissenlit Nes.

Cheveux Fous was just a bit the older of the two, adventurous and nimble, wild and fun-loving. Her hair was long and brown and every day her mother would spend an hour trying to comb all the horrible knots out of it. By the time that she had finished at one side of her daughter's head, the knots had already begun to appear again on the other side.

Pissenlit Nes was slightly smaller and slightly rounder than her sister, observant and thoughtful with a shy sweetness that always brought good cheer. Her hair was as bright as spring sunshine and everywhere she went she was sticking her nose into things. Whether smelling flowers or tasting dirt, she found few scents or flavors wholly unenjoyable.

Cheveux Fous and Pissenlit Nes lived up at the end of the dirt road that climbed the hill above Clovenheim. The village was perhaps the most central and most remote stop on a very long trade route that started below towering mountains and traveled along beside the sea and under clifts and through moist marshes and dense forests and up inland over moors and crags and between golden fields of grain and placid lakes until it finally came to crawl up through the foothills of older and bigger mountains, till it ended where the snow never truly melts away, even in the summer. The route traveled on for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and Cloveheim lay near where the dense forests met the crags and gave way to the windy moors. The village itself was little more than two rows of house and shops surrounding the old road as it gathered itself to climb the steep tors that led out of the seemingly endless forest.

On the north side of town the buildings were wedged snugly between the old forest road and a deep and terrible chasm that split the earth from under the clifty, broken hillside to the west and continued off beyond anyone's knowledge to the east. All of the back gardens on this side were high-walled against the black expanse and the village held to a number of mysterious and slightly contradictory accounts on how the town came to be beside the chasm or how the chasm came to exist beside the town. It was called the Collared Dew and no one remembered why, but everyone respected its mystery and no one ever attempted to cross to its northerly side. Indeed, almost every old wive's tale concerned with crossing the Dew Collar involved a curse and meeting a swift and untimely painful death, usually at the hands of great monsters or evil fairies. While boastful boys bragged about planning to cross it and many men swore oaths by it, none truly dared to near the Dew Collar.

One spring night after darkness had wrapped the forest, Cheveux Fous and Pissenlit Nes were lying in their beds and staring at the ceiling. It was too dark for them to see one another and they hadn't planned to stare the same way, but both girls were filled with the memories of a sunny day and a warm dessert and the prospect that they may just get to do it all over anew starting the next morning. Cheveux Fous was hoping the morning would be misty in the forest and Pissenlit Nes was considering the details of their bedtime story about Pous the Griffenhunter. The frogs were chirping loudly and the house had grown quite silent.

Pissenlit Nes broke the silence.

"Can I lay with you in your bed?"

"No"

Minutes passed by.

"Why do you want to sleep with me? Are you scared?"

"No," replied Pissenlit Nes quite flippantly, ignoring the prodding tone in the second question, "I didn't ask to sleep with you, I only wanted to lay beside you until I was tired! Besides, Pous wards of the Imps and defeats the Griffins," she paused and muttered, "it was a happy ending."

There was silence.

Suddenly, there was a blinding flash of lightening-white light and both girls found themselves sitting up in bed waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dark once again.

When a few moments went by without any other occurrence, Pissenlit Nes asked in awe, "What was that?"

"I-I-I don't know!" responded Cheveux Fous, sounding much more nervous than her little sister.

"Maybe it was just the lantern light and daddy is going to milk Bolt and Beefy." Pissenlit Nes suggested optimistically.

"He doesn't milk this late, silly! And besides, you just had the fresh cream with your dessert, don't you remember?"

"Oh... yes."

Cheveux Fous' courage was back up and running a bit wild.

"I'm going to look and see what's out there!"

"You shouldn't get out of bed " Pissenlit Nes said in alarm as she followed her sister to the window. They snuck a peak around opposite edges of the curtain. Outside the darkness was complete but the moon was nearly whole and it illuminated glowing white clouds above, high-stacked and billowed out, full sail ahead on to lands unknown. The lawns below was basked in a silver glory so that the world they knew so well was utterly altered. Everything ordinary seemed brimming with magic and anything extraordinary could have seemed common place in the silver light and the ominous black shadows. Alas, everything they saw was in its proper condition and nothing seemed amiss.

"Look!" Whispered Cheveux Fous, stabbing the foggy window pane with her finger. At the far edge of the lawn, near the woods, stood a small tree stump around which there grew a fairie ring. Upon the stump there appeared to be a shadow, like dancing smoke that never blew away. All the flowers in the circle seemed to sway along with the haze as if to some unheard song, glowing in the moonlight in their whites and pale yellows and chalky pinks and purples.

Both girls stared with their noses against the glass, unconsciously wiping away the blurry mist that kept forming before their eyes.

"I'm going out there." Pissenlit Nes finally made up her mind.

"What? Are you crazy? What if its a ghost or imps?! What if it's a goblin or a bogie? You'll get eaten! What will momma think?" Cheveux Fous continued to list off obvious flaws in her plan.

"It's not dangerous! Look, whatever it is, it's making the flowers dance. It can't be bad!" She unlatched the window.

"Now," she pushed the window open and began to work her way up onto the sill, "give me a boost!"

"You're not going alone!" Cheveux Fous interlocked her finger and made her hands a step for her little sister to finish mounting the window frame.

"Wait! Promise you won't move a muscle until I come down behind you, okay?"

"Alright, can you make it by yourself?"

"Sure, but I gotta grab something first. Don't move!"

Pissenlit Nes dropped silently and almost gracefully into the slightly damp grass. She was disappointed when she looked around and saw that whatever had been going on in the fairie circle seemed to have ceased completely. The flowers were darker now and they only moved with the occasional breeze. She wondered if she had only imagined the wispy shadow and glowing lights but remembered that it had been her sister who first pointed them out. She thought it seemed unlikely that they could both imagine the same thing, unless she was dreaming, which was possible. If so, she decided, this dream was getting very boring.

After what seemed an eternity, Cheveux Fous let out a soft "Umph!" as she landed and almost instantly asked with great irritation, "What happened? Where did it go?"

"I thought maybe I had imagined it all, but I don't supposed we both did at the same time. And this isn't a dream, is it?"

Her sister pinched her. She pinched her sister back, but mostly because she was annoyed at being pinched.

"When I got out here everything was already back to normal again." Pissenlit Nes said, rubbing the pinch out of her arm.

"Maybe we scared it off!" Cheveux Fous sounded exceedingly bold now, "I guess I was wrong about imps. That's a relief!"

Someone snorted indignantly off to the side of the house and they both leaped nearly high enough to make it back through the window. Trembling, they turned to see a shadowy shape striding out from the deep shadow of the eves and stop before them.

"Imps? IMPS?!?" Psh! You think imps would lead the flowers' dance in a fairie hall?" the person asked incredulously. "Obviously, you know nothing of the company of a hoarde of imps!"

"Well, I did say that I thought it mustn't be imps or a bogie." Pissenlit Nes justified herself timidly.