ONCE UPON A TIME
IN THE NORTHERN reaches of England lay a long and gentle valley, with villages and meadows and wooded hills. Dapple Vale was the valley’s name, and the woods were known as Glade Forest, for many sunlit glades lay within their cool, green reaches. Glade Forest was surrounded by royal forest on all sides, but neither it nor Dapple Vale were on any map, and the Norman king and his foresters and tax collectors and huntsmen knew nothing of their existence.
Within the green, leafy expanse of Glade Forest lay the border with the Faerie realm, where the Fey dwelled. The boundary was invisible to the human eye; nothing marked it but a tingle, a lifting of hair on the back of one’s neck. Wise men turned back when they felt the tingle, and unwise men continued and were never seen again.
Despite its proximity to Faerie—or perhaps because of it—the sun shone more often in Dapple Vale than elsewhere in England, and the winters were less harsh. The Great Plague bypassed Dapple Vale, and the Great Famine, too. Crops flourished, animals were fat and sleek, and the vale’s folk were hale and long-lived.
One road led to the vale, but few travelers discovered it. No Romans found Dapple Vale, nor Vikings, and England’s latest invaders, the Normans, hadn’t found it either. Even folk born and bred in the vale had been known to leave and never find their way back, so well hidden was Glade Forest. Shrewd inhabitants took a pebble worn smooth by the clear, sweet waters of the River Dapple with them if they ventured from the vale, to be certain of returning.
The folk of Dapple Vale didn’t take their good fortune for granted. They had heard of plagues and famines, heard of marauding soldiers and starving serfs and murderous outlaws. Each was careful to respect the forest that sheltered them, and most careful of all was the Lord Warder of Dapple Vale, who went by the name Dappleward. Dappleward and his sons and his liegemen, the Ironfists, knew the location of rings of standing stones where the Fey had danced in olden times. They knew where to find the great stone barrow that held the grave of a banished Faerie prince, and they knew of the dark and narrow crevice wherein lay a hoard of abandoned Faerie gold. They knew these places, and guarded them carefully.
----
ALL TALES MUST have a beginning, and our tale begins in Dapple Bend, in the crook of Dapple Vale, where there once lived a miller’s widow and her three beautiful daughters. The widow was half-blind and half-lame, but she had whole-hearted courage, and when she came upon a Faerie babe drowning in a deep, dark pool in the forest, she flung herself into the water to save it.
Now the Fey are dangerous and capricious and cruel, and the folk of Dapple Vale know better than to attract their attention, but Widow Miller went searching for the border with Faerie and called the babe’s mother to her.
The Fey dislike humans, and dislike even more being indebted to them, and the babe’s mother was deeply in Widow Miller’s debt, so she granted the widow a wish, and each of her daughters a wish, too, and their daughters in turn.
Widow Miller entered Glade Forest half-lame and half-blind; she left it supple-limbed and clear-eyed and with a girl’s spring in her step, and two weeks later she married the blacksmith she had secretly loved for years.
Her three daughters were to receive their wishes on their next birthdays, and those birthdays were soon. As spring ripened into the golden days of summer, the widow’s daughters waited with joyful hearts for their birthdays to come.
Thus begins our story . . .
CHAPTER ONE
TAM DAPPLEWARD SHUCKED off his boots. The creek burbled at his feet, clean and cold. A wash, a shave, clean clothes, and then home. Home. After five months, home .
He pulled his stained, faded tunic over his head, and began peeling out of his fraying hose—and stopped as his ears caught the scuff of footsteps on the road.
IN THE NORTHERN reaches of England lay a long and gentle valley, with villages and meadows and wooded hills. Dapple Vale was the valley’s name, and the woods were known as Glade Forest, for many sunlit glades lay within their cool, green reaches. Glade Forest was surrounded by royal forest on all sides, but neither it nor Dapple Vale were on any map, and the Norman king and his foresters and tax collectors and huntsmen knew nothing of their existence.
Within the green, leafy expanse of Glade Forest lay the border with the Faerie realm, where the Fey dwelled. The boundary was invisible to the human eye; nothing marked it but a tingle, a lifting of hair on the back of one’s neck. Wise men turned back when they felt the tingle, and unwise men continued and were never seen again.
Despite its proximity to Faerie—or perhaps because of it—the sun shone more often in Dapple Vale than elsewhere in England, and the winters were less harsh. The Great Plague bypassed Dapple Vale, and the Great Famine, too. Crops flourished, animals were fat and sleek, and the vale’s folk were hale and long-lived.
One road led to the vale, but few travelers discovered it. No Romans found Dapple Vale, nor Vikings, and England’s latest invaders, the Normans, hadn’t found it either. Even folk born and bred in the vale had been known to leave and never find their way back, so well hidden was Glade Forest. Shrewd inhabitants took a pebble worn smooth by the clear, sweet waters of the River Dapple with them if they ventured from the vale, to be certain of returning.
The folk of Dapple Vale didn’t take their good fortune for granted. They had heard of plagues and famines, heard of marauding soldiers and starving serfs and murderous outlaws. Each was careful to respect the forest that sheltered them, and most careful of all was the Lord Warder of Dapple Vale, who went by the name Dappleward. Dappleward and his sons and his liegemen, the Ironfists, knew the location of rings of standing stones where the Fey had danced in olden times. They knew where to find the great stone barrow that held the grave of a banished Faerie prince, and they knew of the dark and narrow crevice wherein lay a hoard of abandoned Faerie gold. They knew these places, and guarded them carefully.
----
ALL TALES MUST have a beginning, and our tale begins in Dapple Bend, in the crook of Dapple Vale, where there once lived a miller’s widow and her three beautiful daughters. The widow was half-blind and half-lame, but she had whole-hearted courage, and when she came upon a Faerie babe drowning in a deep, dark pool in the forest, she flung herself into the water to save it.
Now the Fey are dangerous and capricious and cruel, and the folk of Dapple Vale know better than to attract their attention, but Widow Miller went searching for the border with Faerie and called the babe’s mother to her.
The Fey dislike humans, and dislike even more being indebted to them, and the babe’s mother was deeply in Widow Miller’s debt, so she granted the widow a wish, and each of her daughters a wish, too, and their daughters in turn.
Widow Miller entered Glade Forest half-lame and half-blind; she left it supple-limbed and clear-eyed and with a girl’s spring in her step, and two weeks later she married the blacksmith she had secretly loved for years.
Her three daughters were to receive their wishes on their next birthdays, and those birthdays were soon. As spring ripened into the golden days of summer, the widow’s daughters waited with joyful hearts for their birthdays to come.
Thus begins our story . . .
CHAPTER ONE
TAM DAPPLEWARD SHUCKED off his boots. The creek burbled at his feet, clean and cold. A wash, a shave, clean clothes, and then home. Home. After five months, home .
He pulled his stained, faded tunic over his head, and began peeling out of his fraying hose—and stopped as his ears caught the scuff of footsteps on the road.
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