The Dance of Elves

Fairy Ring

She always walked around holding her camera, capturing landscapes, people, and everyday moments. On rainy days, when she couldn’t go for a walk, she uploaded the photos to the laptop and examined them repeatedly, discovering previously unnoticed details. She believed that by capturing photographs, she could genuinely connect with the essence of the place and its people.

For her walks, she took a variety of routes. Some of them were through the centre of the little town. She chose these routes every Friday when she shopped for the household. One walk concluded at the supermarket, while another meandered through the flea market. Another path led to the farm, where she got fresh eggs. But wherever she went, she always had her camera with her.

When she sought relaxation, solitude, or contemplation, she opted for different paths in nature. She enjoyed strolling by the river or around the small lake in the nearby village, where she found numerous subjects to capture with her camera. Her favourite route, though, was through the forest behind her house. She was unafraid of the forest, unlike others who didn’t dare to take the same route alone. From a tender age, her heart has been captivated by the enchanting allure of forests and trees. She believed that trees are evolved entities without convictions and egos. Supreme beings that exist in this world as observers, possessing extraordinary qualities and abilities beyond human imagination. During her walks, she would often stop by a tree, embrace it, and softly converse with it. It seemed as if she were whispering a secret or extracting meaningful information from the tree. She was walking along the forest paths, smiling and stumbling here and there as if she were among friends.

When she first came to the area about five years ago, she had heard a local legend about a place in the forest where fairies appear. Specifically, the tale talked about a tree-passage, from whose branches, fairies and elves come to our world and return to theirs whenever they please. A time and place tree-machine, that is. In her quest to locate this tree, she discovered this route. Since then, every time she passed it, she sang…

Hello fairies, hello elves, in which world are you now?
Hello fairies, hello elves, when will you tell me your stories?
Hello fairies, hello elves, I hope we can hang out one day!

…and she continued her walk.

It was pouring rain on the Saturday before she disappeared, so she couldn’t leave the house at all, not even to buy the local weekly newspaper as usual. She looked out of the window to see if she could find a gap in the heavy rain, a little blue between the heavy clouds, but there was nothing. It was a very dark and scary day. So, she stayed at home and looked at her photos. It was a good opportunity to empty the memory card from her camera, which was almost full.

Sunday dawned sunny and warm. It was summer, so she didn’t need to wear heavy clothes. However, she put on her wellies because there would surely be mud after yesterday’s storm. She also threw on a light raincoat and set off on the trail behind the house.
The trees still dripped with rain, and tiny drops kept falling on her. With each drop, she smiled and said to the trees,

“I knew you would tease me today as you hold water in your hands!”

…and she walked lightly through the forest.

She noticed something interesting when she arrived at the fairy tree. A cluster of mushrooms was growing in a large circle just beneath the tree. This was a sight she had never seen before. She took out her camera and captured a few images. Then, she recalled reading in a book of Celtic myths about the “fairy ring,” a phenomenon where a ring of mushrooms suddenly appears overnight, indicating the presence of an underground village of fairies, elves, witches, and other potentially dangerous beings. According to the legend, if you look closely, you might see elves sitting on the mushroom caps, using them as tables for their feasts. She knelt outside the circle and approached one of the mushrooms with her camera, hoping to capture an image of an elf. Unfortunately, she found nothing.

She immediately thought of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, specifically the scene where the elves sing…

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire;
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere.
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favors;
In those freckles live their savors.
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits. I’ll be gone.
Our queen and all her elves come here anon. (*)

She spent some time there trying to remember more details of the legend. He recalled that the elves form this circle for the fairies to dance, and no human should interrupt their fun. If anyone enters the circle, they will become invisible and forced to dance with the magical creatures without stopping until they go mad or collapse from exhaustion. A variant of the legend, however, said that it is not the beings that make the elves’ dance dangerous but the nature of their world.

There, time does not exist.

Thus, if someone who experiences time as we know it dances with the elves in a fairyland for a few minutes, it would be as if he had been dancing for days or even weeks. Only a few have managed to come out alive from such a feast.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the distant sounds of bells. She stood still for a moment and listened. Was it true, she wondered, or was she being swayed by the testimonies of people who had heard joyful voices and laughter from the elven circles for thousands of years? She decided to find out for herself. With a quick decision and a small step, she suddenly found herself inside the mushroom circle.

She vanished without a trace. The mushroom circle was gone a few days later, but someone found a camera in the grass. When they looked inside, they found the photo you see above.


(*) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene I [Over hill, over dale] by William Shakespeare – Poems | Academy of American Poets

 


Discover more myths from around the world, here.

Picture of Sofia Motsia

Sofia Motsia

MA Creative Writing, BA Theatre studies

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