The fog moves slowly inward, like sand in an hourglass,
Measuring the time until midnight.
Twining breathy fingers through blades of frosted grass,
It signals the coming of the twilight.
Again the balance comes between the light and shadow
As smoke from Mabon fires scents the breeze.
One look into the evening fog and you cannot help but know
Tonight there's more within than just the trees.

As we whirl closer to winter, there is frisson in the air,
An alien vibration on our skin.
It's a feeling other seasons of the year can never share—
And it only ever starts when fall begins.
It's anticipating something, though what it is is never clear,
Yet from this suspense we're never freed.
Waiting is never so poignant as when you know a change draws near.
And the change that looms ahead is great indeed.

We all can mark the time of year by this feeling in our bones,
Though most don't know what it means.
Yet it stalks us in the daytime and seeps into our homes
As the sun sets alight the changing leaves.
Those of us who walk the path on which the ancients trod before
Sense the season's change with eager hearts.
We know what the feeling means: It means the veil grows thin once more,
And tonight the air is charged as autumn starts.

This evening as the season shifts and the sabbat fires burn,
The shadows in the fog seem half alive.
Not only those of mortal flesh can feel the Year Wheel turn,
Or wait for something yearned for to arrive.
As the veil is growing thinner and more diaphanous by day,
The bridge between the worlds is clear to pass.
So the spirits wait for Samhain, the Mischief Night, to play,
As the fog marks the time like an hourglass.

When I was but a young girl of three,
The Spirit of Winter first came to me.
Hair like a fall of starless night sky,
Flesh white as snow and lapis in his eyes.
He took me down pathways of ice, cold, and snow,
On winds of the winter to see mountain streams flow.
Such times that we had, I could never forget
The spirit of winter that I had once met.

One Midsummer's Eve, as I danced 'round the flames,
And sang all the sun songs and joined in the games,
I saw a blue eye that captured my own,
Filled with wintry cold that chilled to my bone.
It was my dear friend, although in a strange form
Of tanned skin and red blood, mortal and warm.
My childhood friend turned to lover that night,
Far away from the glow of the bonfire's light.

Now those days of my youth are lost on the wind,
And only now I remember my friend.
The lover I've missed for so many a year
Has come back once more for his lady dear.
He gives me his hand and I give him mine,
Amidst the snowflakes' and icicles' shine.
He says I can join him if I just let go,
And follow him into the ice, wind and snow.

Mistress, I've come—what is it you ask?
Have you for me a duty or task?
No? …well then why don't you come with me,
For I've got something I want you to see.
Come and visit my garden.

Your eyes tell me volumes you'd rather they not—
The young don't remember the slave time forgot.
Did never your granddam tell tales of the sidhe?
Well, I've got something that you have to see.
Come and walk through my garden.

I am your tool to reshape the world.
My powers can make you more than 'some girl'.
Confess your dearest kept dreams to me,
Together we'll make them what they ought to be—
But first, take a stroll through my garden.

Name the one talent you'd love to possess,
And try hard to nurture with little success.
I'll make you a master if you trust in me,
But first there is something I think you should see.
You'd love to lay eyes on my garden.

Your grandmother's left me forgotten for years.
She's no use for magic now, so it appears.
Let's keep this a secret between you and me,
And hey, while we're at it won't you come and see
What wonders there are in my garden.

Your foremothers thought that I was their slave,
But guess who escorted them all to the grave?
I've kept them as trophies of sweet victory,
Strong were my captors, but stronger the sidhe,
And now they all grow in my garden.
I've kept them to grow in my garden.

I've kept them to grow in my garden.

You struggle each day with your fetters,
Hoping your goal is in sight,
That something out there is better
Than your eternal fight.
But if you let go of your moorings
Your life would be nothing but bliss.
Come take my hand, embrace what you are,
Succumb to my sanguine...

I know what you hide within;
You bury it deeper each day.
But let yourself slip into sin
And to heaven you'll fly away.
You know that you like it this way—
You can't live without the pain.
Every scream and moan is your anthem
Though you sneer and call it...

I see it shining in your eyes, that look that means goodbye.
Your white wings, spreading inch by inch, yearn to touch the sky.
Feathers gleam like ivory; your departure now begins.
I know what made you turn from me—and is love such a sin?

You said you'd stay forever and that you loved me too,
But now it ends, and now you leave, and I've done all I could do.
I never meant to scare you or to keep you from the sky;
You say you have to leave me now, but you cannot tell me why.

You graced me briefly with a joy whose like I'll no more know,
But I bear you no malice, love, as I watch you go.
As long as you are happy, then that's enough for me.
I'd not be worthy of your love if I didn't set you free.

The lady dressed in azure now lets down her long red hair,
Sighing at the soft caress of the salty seaside air.
Beyond the pillars lies the sea, its whitecaps rising high,
Shooting frothy foam into the fiery evening sky.
She gazes outside listlessly, her mind completely blank,
Tracing o'er the roiling waves and up the sandy bank.
She wishes for excitement, to be free from all she knows,
So guiltily her mind trails back to the stallion and the rose.

Many are the noble knights who call her father Lord,
They serve him truly with their deeds, their honor and their swords.
One among them boasts the right to claim the lady's hand—
But this knight is not the one that her love can command.
There is another in the court that she would wish to wed.
The lovers hide their romance and share a secret bed.
Every chance the lady finds, to her lover's side she goes,
And dreams in ecstasy's embrace of the stallion and the rose.

Today the breeze is ominous and warns of darker days.
The fishers work to stow their gear down on the city's quays.
The lady fidgets nervously, sensing troubles near,
When on the ramparts of the keep the warning horn sounds clear.
The lady tears her gaze away from the ocean and the sky,
For far below, upon the bridge, a messenger she spies.
The standard snapping smartly in the ocean wind that blows
Bears the symbols of his house: The stallion and the rose.

She fears the worst, and runs to see what news the herald brings,
Urging speed to feet she wish would suddenly grow wings.
Her kirtle flying wildly, she heeds her worry's call,
And stops abruptly in the doorway to her father's hall.
All eyes fall upon her where she stands inside the door—
The anxious glimmer in their stares concerns her all the more.
She can scarcely breathe—it's as if her blood just froze
As she worries for the safety of the stallion and the rose.

"What news?" she asks her father, who heads the somber court,
And as she hears his answer, she feels her breath fall short—
"Sir Adwain's been abducted by some baleful foe,
And unless we send you in his stead, they will not let him go.
This note is from the House of Rowan, within the land of sidhe,
And says my daughter is the price if Adwain should go free.
And so we have a choice to make—who stays and who goes,
My own beloved daughter, or the stallion and the rose?"

You can feel it pumping through you,
Hear its rhythm in your sleep.
It tints your guilty pleasures,
And the secrets that you keep.
There is power in its pulsing,
And when spilled, it yields great gain—
But I see you are no stranger
To the spells of blood and pain.

Your magic invited me up here
It compelled me to answer your call,
But the language of demons is tricky at best,
And you are no master at all.
So sweetly you stood in the darkness,
In madness and mist you were clothed.
A slip of the tongue was all that it took,
And now you and I are betrothed!

You had not expected a suitor,
You can try to flee or to fight,
But you've not the power to banish me back,
And by your words your hand is my right!
I don't know what you were thinking,
But somehow you captured my heart,
So now that you're weakest, come hither, my dear,
And pledge till death do us part!

Most people in the country know
That night's the time for play.
It shrouds the fun you'd rather
Never see the light of day.
But nighttime brings more perils
Than a risqué fling or thrill—
It's also when some hapless souls
Are robbed of all their will.

Far high up in the mountains,
Where grow more rocks than trees,
A newly-wedded husband
Finds his bride a mystery.
For each night of the new moon,
He alone in bed will lie,
And his lover cannot stop herself,
Or even tell him why.

She doesn't know she leaves the keep,
Where she goes, or why she's there.
She only knows, come morning,
That leaves are tangled in her hair.
He locked her up at dusk once,
And she was there at morning's light,
But her clothing, wet and muddy,
Showed she'd walked the woods all night.

One night he tried to follow her
Down the mountain steep,
Convinced she couldn't go that way
If she were walking in her sleep.
For all his careful footing,
He was tripped by roots and more,
And his lady swiftly slipped away,
Down to the valley floor.

She comes into the chamber now,
As the new sun lifts its head—
He watches her undressing
Behind the curtains on the bed.
His heart is racing quickly
As he stares at the leaves and mud,
For now the grey, wet velvet
Is dark and soaked with blood.

Deep in the oily shadows
Where even rats won't go
Lies the last shred of my reason
That I lost some time ago.
It's there I like to shelter
And pick and choose at will,
Where I wait to find the lady
That next I'd like to kill.

They come to me all smiles,
So glad to take my arm.
They preen at my affections,
Hinting at their charms.
But the rules are very different
When we reach the bedroom door
Than they've been with any Johnny
They've ever served before.

I hunger not for pleasures
That a normal lover would,
And I cannot find them in the ways
Society thinks I should.
So near the rushing river
On a foggy autumn night,
Another helpless woman
Finds her pain is my delight.

The papers hound my footsteps
While the Yard hunts night and day.
The world may be disgusted,
But they cannot look away.
They guess at my true nature,
But none will ever know
The consuming motivation
That drives each fatal blow.

You call me crazy for daring to dream
You say I've lost my grip on reality
But crazy is quitting before you even begin
And I won't be kept down by your fatality.
There's too much glory inside me to hide,
And it'll claw its way out as it wants to.
I can't keep it in, and should never have tried,
Especially not for someone like you.

You laugh when I fumble and claim you were right,
But mistakes aren't the end of the story,
Through your disbelieving, I'll continue to fight
To properly honor my glory.
It only appears like I've lost my direction
But that part of the tale is but half.
Every wrong turn is a chance for reflection,
Another reminder that I make the path.

When last we left the lady, she had a choice to make.
The life of her beloved and her own soul were at stake.
Will she sacrifice herself to save the one she loves,
Or will she yet prove selfish now that push has come to shove?

She stands and thinks—and hesitates—can this all be real?
It's so bizarre she isn't sure in what way she should feel.
Better that her lover had been caught with her and killed
Than that he should have to face the ire of the folk below the hill.
The room spins about her as the knights begin to quarrel.
Which has better value: The fighter or the girl?
And she longed for adventure with her love, not endless woes—
Now should she save herself or save the stallion and the rose?

It snaps together in an instant—she knows what she would do,
She speaks and draws the notice of all men in the room.
"The safety of my father's lands is paramount to my own,
So I will go to Adwain's aid and they'll swiftly send him home."
"But I need you to curry favor in the house of pine and boar—"
"Your favored knight, or marriage contracts—which one matters more?
I know my value to you, father, is more than you'd propose,
And you're better off not surrendering the stallion and the rose."

There is no more arguing—she has said her piece.
She will go to save her love, and suit the sidhe's caprice.
With no lack of trepidation, she oversees the maids
Who pack up her necessities to send her on her way.
The day comes all too quickly when she sets out with her guard
To spend a fortnight on the highway, pushing, pushing hard.
And finally the night arrives when she must pay the debt she owes,
And enter lands unknown to save the stallion and the rose.

The world of mortals fades away beneath the twilight sky.
Reluctantly the lady bids her former life goodbye.
Although she fantasized of leaving her sheltered life behind,
She never dreamed she'd one day be the captive of the faerie kind.
She looks to see what master now claims her for his own,
And hopes her lover makes it safely back to his fair home.
But there is no cruel elven lord to threaten or impose—
Instead there stands Sir Adwain of the stallion and the rose.

His face is free of worry and his raiment very fine.
He looks more like a noble lord than a prisoner confined
To dungeons of some alien lord for the last four weeks or so,
And his eyes allude to secrets she is not prepared to know.
"I welcome you to Faerie now, my love from the world of men,
And hope that you will stay with me and never leave again.
I'll share with you a confidence no other mortal knows—
'Twas the elven lords who begat the house of the stallion and the rose.

"I have lived among your kin for decades this time around,
And while I watched and studied them, your gentle love I found.
Since we could never marry there, I organized this ruse,
And hope a life with me is the one that you would rather choose."
Through his confident façade, she sees his worry plain,
But there's no doubt within her mind with whom she'd rather stay.
She smiles at her lover, and her youthful visage glows
As she falls into the loving arms of the stallion and the rose.

As children we all heard the stories
Of creatures that died long ago,
Of dinosaurs of land, sea, and air,
And their likenesses we've come to know.
But my favorite stories are stranger—
They have valor, and fire, and gold.
But those tales are just make-believe,
They aren't real—or so we're told.

Dragons were once feared and worshipped—
Dragons were loved and adored.
They lived in the forests, they swam in the seas,
And wherever we hadn't explored.
Now we think of them only as fiction,
But I for one can't help but feel
That for all of the stories we have from yore,
That those dragons of legend are real.

Yet never today do we see them
Except in our artwork and dreams.
And scholars still ponder the meaning behind
Their appearance in literary themes.
Few folk believe they existed,
Or if they did, were much more mundane,
Yet I can't shake the feeling they're out there somewhere,
For reasons I cannot explain,

And if you're like me you'll agree that
We feel their presence each day,
And celebrate their mythology
In many of thousands of ways.
And some people feel they're amongst us—
This indeed is a truth that I see,
For I've felt them near in the dark of the night,
And the spirit of Fire glows in me!