Leopard in Exile by Andre Norton, Rosemary Edghill Page B

nor her skirts would survive the expedition. With a sigh, she stopped at the
    edge of Moonmere and looked down.
    Barely a ruffle of wind marred its surface, and so Sarah saw her reflection mirrored against the sky: a
    plain brown-haired, grey-eyed girl in a simple white calico day dress.
    Who is Sarah ? she wondered. Who am I ?
    Suddenly the light failed. Sarah looked around, and saw that the surface of the lake was steaming. Veils
    of mist were rising from its surface, forming a thick cloud that was moving quickly to envelop her. She
    took a swift step backward before realizing that whatever danger the mist represented, it was moving too
    fast for her to escape. Resolutely, Sarah steeled herself to face what came.
    The fogbank broke over her like a chill caress, blotting out sight and scent. Sarah looked down, and even
    the grass beneath her feet was gone, enveloped in the all-concealing greyness. In that moment Sarah
    recognized it for what it was.
    Magic.
    "Sarah…"
    The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
    " Help us — help them — help yourself .…"
    The mist drew back a little, and now Sarah could see her surroundings once more, but they were terribly
    changed. The close-cut grass beneath her feet was a sparkling silver, and the colorless trees across the
    lake sparkled as though they had been dusted thickly with sugar. The water at her feet was mirror-still
    and mirror-silver: no sunlight danced upon its surface, nor did it reflect the blue of the sky.
    Neither sun nor moon.
    "Where are you? Show yourself!" Sarah cried.
    "I am here."
    He was as she had first seen him: a man as small as a child, dressed in a sort of short deerskin toga, his
    skin stained dark in a dappled pattern that was meant to match the pattern of moonlight through trees.
    His hair was long, and carefully braided with leaves, and around his throat he wore a torque of pure gold,
    with terminals of clear amber carved in the shape of acorns. He reached out a hand to her.
    "Walk with me, Sarah."
    Unhesitatingly, Sarah put a hand into his. She had met him—or his like—before. This was one of the
    Oldest People, the race who had held this land before her own people's ancestors. That Sarah's kind
    now walked its green hills was by the sufferance of these elder kin, to whom she owed a daughter's
    respect. He had come to her once before when she was new in this world… but what was his purpose
    now?
    The mist dissolved before them, but it did not show Sarah the familiar lands around her home. Instead,
    they walked in silence through a forest of oaks whose trunks were larger than three men together, where
    the mist swathed the great branches like bridal veils.
    "This is the land as it once was, before Men came out of the East with their flint and bronze and steel,"
    the fairy-lord said. "Once it was ours, then you came to take it from us."
    "Why are you showing me this?" Sarah asked. She pulled against his grip, but it was as if the land itself
    gripped her. Now he was taller, wearing green velvet instead of spotted doeskin, his face hidden by a
    golden mask with branching jeweled antlers.
    "It is the nature of Man to take, just as it is the nature of Time to send each race through the Grey Gates
    in the end. But oh!—not yet, Sarah!—do not send us away yet!"
    "I will not banish you ever," Sarah said, puzzled. "Mooncoign is yours for as long as you wish it, and I
    think—I have heard—that the King has said your lands and ancient rights here in England are to be
    respected by all men."
    "The generous words of an English king, but no King rules in France," the fairylord said sadly. "The Great
    Marriage has not been made there, and the land suffers. We are the land, Sarah, and so we daily
    dwindle and die!"
    "But what am I to do?" Sarah asked, confused.
    "Come." As she followed him once more, the great oaks slowly vanished from the landscape. Now the
    land was gently rolling, forested in pine and birch… and hauntingly familiar.
    "I