When at last he really awoke he found himself lying on a bed of soft moss, under the shade of some great trees, for it was summer time—summer evening time it seemed, for the light was subdued, like that of the sun from behind a cloud. Con started up in amazement, rubbing his eyes to make sure he was not dreaming. Where was he? How could it all be? The last thing he remembered was losing his way in the snow-storm on the mountain; what had become of the winter and the snow? He looked about him; the place he was in seemed to be a sort of forest glade; the foliage of the trees was so thickly interlaced overhead that only little patches of sky were here and there to be seen. There was no sunshine; just the same even, pale light over everything. It gave him again the feeling of being in a dream. Suddenly a sound caught his ears, it was that of running water; he turned in the direction whence it came.
It was the loveliest little brook you ever saw—“with many a curve” it wound along through the forest, and on its banks grew the most exquisite and wonderful variety of flowers. Flowers of every colour, but of shapes and forms Con had never seen before. He stood looking at them in bewildered delight, and as he looked, suddenly the thought for the first time flashed into his mind—“This is fairyland! I have got my wish at last. I am in fairyland!”
There was something, even to him, almost overwhelming in the idea. He could not move or speak, hardly even breathe. All at once there burst out in every direction, above his head, beneath his feet, behind him, in front of him, everywhere in fact, peals and peals of laughter—the clearest, merriest, most irresistible laughter you ever heard.
“It’s the fairies,” thought Con, “but where are they?”
Where were they? Everywhere. There came another shrill peal of laughter and up they sprang, all together, from every imaginable corner. There was not a branch of a tree, hardly even a twig, it seemed to Con, on which one was not perched. They poked up their comical faces above the clear water of the brook where they must have been hiding, though how he had failed to see them there the boy could not imagine; they started up from the ground in such numbers, that Con lifted carefully first one foot and then the other to make sure he was not tramping upon some of them; they actually swarmed, and Con could not make it out at all. Could they have only just come, or had they been there all the time, and had something wrong with his eyes prevented his seeing them before? No, he couldn’t make it out.
Were they like what he had expected to find them? Hardly, at least he was not sure. Yet they were very pretty; they were as light and bright and agile as—like nothing he could think of. Their faces seemed to be brimming over with glee; there was not a sad or anxious look among them. They were dressed in every colour of the rainbow, I was going to say, but that would not be true, for there were no brilliant colours among them. In every shade that you see in the woods in autumn would be more correct; the ladies in the soft greens and brown pinks and tender yellows of the fading leaves, the gentlemen in the olives and russet-browns and purples which give the deeper tints of autumn foliage—perhaps this was the reason that Con had not at first distinguished them from the leaves and the moss and the tree-roots where they had lain hidden?
He stood gazing at them in silence, wondering when they were going to leave off laughing. At last the noise subsided, and one fairy, who had been swinging on a bough just above Con’s head, slid down and stood before him.
“Welcome to fairyland, Connemara,” he said pompously. He was one of the tallest among them, reaching above Con’s waist. His face, like the rest, was full of fun, but it had a look of great determination too. “My name is Frisken,” he continued, “at least that’s one of my names, and it will do for you to use as well as any other, though up above there they have ever so many names for me. I am an old friend of yours, though you may not know it, and you will find it for your interest to please me. We’ve given up kings and queens lately, we find it’s better fun without; but, considering everything, I think I may say my opinion is considered of some importance. Elves, do you agree with me?”
They all raised a shout of approval, and Frisken turned again to Con. “Our laws are easy to keep,” he said, “you will soon know them. Your duties are comprised in one word, Play, and if ever you attempt to do anything else it will be the worse for you. You interrupted us in the middle of a dance, by-the-by. Elves, strike up the music.”