“Look!” and at that she stooped, lifted the dew of a white flower in the moonshine, and put it upon his eyes.
Cathal looked about him. Everywhere he saw tall fair pale-green lives moving to and fro: some passing out of trees, swift and silent as rain out of a cloud; some passing into trees, silent and swift as shadows. All were fair to look upon: tall, lithe, graceful, moving this way and that in the moonshine, pale green as the leaves of the lime, soft shining, with radiant eyes, and delicate earth-brown hair.
“Who are these, Deòin?” Cathal asked in a low whisper of awe.
“They are my people: the folk of the woods: the green people.”
“But they come out of trees: they come and they go like bees in and out of a hive.”
“Trees? That is your name for us of the woods. We are the trees.”
“You the trees, Deòin! How can that be?”
“There is life in your body. Where does it go when the body sleeps, or when the sap rises no more to heart or brain, and there is chill in the blood, and it is like frozen water? Is there a life in your body?”
“Ay, so. I know it.”
“The flesh is your body: the tree is my body.”