Once upon a time, in the Land of Three Rivers, there was a little house perched on a sandy bluff. It overlooked the most beautiful of the three rivers deep in the piney woods. A witch lived there and her name was Janan. She had pale skin and dark hair, which she kept in a braid as thick as a child’s arm down her back. She knew much about the herbs, wildflowers, and mushrooms that grew under the pines and loved to walk in the woods gathering them for her potions.

Janan once loved a dark-haired man who came to Three Rivers from an island on the other side of the eastern sea. When he left to find his fortune in the sunken city to the south, her heart hurt so much that she put it in a box and buried it deep in the woods for safekeeping. She swore no mortal man would ever find it and there it stayed through so many turns of the seasons that even the witch forgot where she had hidden it.

One bright autumn day when a cool breeze rustled and roared through the tall evergreens, Janan went in search of mushrooms. It rained the day before and the ground was still damp. The occasional tallow tree provided bursts of scarlet and orange. Purple status and goldenrod bloomed in the clearings and the light was as golden as honey.

The day went on and, during the hour when the light was most golden and crowned the tops of the pines, Janan was deep in the heart of the wood. There she saw an enormous and ancient oak. Past that, she saw a cluster of orange chanterelles.

When she walked past the oak to gather them, she felt a moment of disorientation. She looked around to find the trees in an unfamiliar configuration and no orange mushrooms in sight. Janan was familiar with every corner of the forest but did not recognize this one.

The great oak was still there and, before Janan could decide what to do, a door opened in the trunk and a man with hair and skin as pale as the moon in the daytime sky and eyes as dark green as the pines emerged. He held a box in his hands that she recognized for this was no mortal man but a Faerie Lord and he had found her heart.

“Be my wife,” he said, “stay with me and you will live forever and never know want.”

Janan took his hand and went with him. In the underground lands beyond time and season, the ground was carpeted with velvety green moss and white violets. It was lit by glowing crystals and fireflies that never died.

The Faerie Lord and Janan rode through this land on his white horse. They followed a sparkling underground stream until they came to a palace made of twigs, bark, moss, spider webs, and flower petals. Faerie ladies fair as moonbeams bathed Janan in rosewater and dressed her in a gossamer gown. They adorned her hair with silver thread and pearls.

The wedding feast of candied violets and rose petals, mushrooms, and wine followed. There were platters of fruits and berries stranger and sweeter than any that ripened under an earthly sun. Faerie harpists and singers created music that shimmered in the constant twilight and was almost too beautiful for mortal ears to bear.

Janan did not mark the passing of time in Faerie. There were no seasons; there was no day and no night. One day she was riding when she saw a bluebird. She was concerned for the little thing and followed it as it flitted further and further away from the palace of moss and petals.

Finally, the bird flew up. Janan left her horse and followed it up a ladder of roots and found herself in the Sun. The bluebird turned into a crow and flew away; leaving the woman in front of the same great oak she had entered so long before.

A great weariness came over her and she looked down at her hands, which were now wrinkled and spotted with age. She pulled a strand of hair in front of her face and found it to be silver. Janan screamed and wept before the tree but it did not open. In sorrow, she made her way back to her little house in the same golden, autumnal light she had left it in and found the muffins she had made the morning she left still fresh.

Without heart or youth or Faerie Lord, Janan went down to the river to lay in its cold water one last time. Far away, her heart shattered like glass in its box and she died.

It is said that a box was left on her grave. Some say, if you go to the graveyard on All Souls Night, you will see a Faerie Lord weeping in the moonlight but others say it is just a stray moonbeam.