It was the plate I had just left in the garden.

I dropped my knife on the floor and ran out of that house. I jumped from the top step down to the ground and landed in the grass crouched down on my toes and on the tips of my fingers. I sprang up and I ran as fast as I could to that faerie circle. I skidded down the slope in my trainers and fell, landing on my bottom right before it.

My plate was gone. Sitting in its place were the pair of pink socks that I had lost the very first night I stayed at the cabin, neatly folded. I picked them up slowly with shaking hands and noticed something inside. I stuck my fingers in, felt around and drew whatever it was out of the fold.

“Holy shite,” I muttered with my hand over my mouth, “It’s true!”

“Silvia?” Oliver was calling from across the garden. I could see him coming out of the house, I‘d just missed his arrival, “Are you home, Love?”

“Oliver, come here!”

“There you are!” He wandered over and bent to kiss me. “What’s up, Sil? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“What are these?”

He took them from my hand and turned them over. “They’re keys…” He paused and drew in a deep breath, “Blimey, Sil! These are the keys I accused Alex of taking the night I chopped down the door! He swore he didn’t! He was all ticked off for me saying he did! Where’d you find them?”

I held up my socks and pointed into the circle. I was speechless.

“Did you leave them sweets?”

I nodded.

Oliver grinned, “I think you’ve met the Lord and Lady! They’ve been waiting for you to come to them, haven’t they? And I’d bet they like you, too, since they gave you back two things and not just the one!” He was beside himself. Smile splitting his face, he slapped his hands against his thighs and looked to the sky, letting loose a triumphant howl. Then he turned back to me, “Now do you believe?”

I looked around the garden, “Do I have a choice?”

Oliver took me in his arms, “Did you ever?”

No, I guess I didn’t really have a choice, especially not after that.

I learned to make candies after that day just so I could leave a variety of sweets in the circle for the Lord and the Lady. Oliver’s socks would come up missing still from time to time, but nothing of mine, not ever again until after the children arrived.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Time passes and so did another year for us. Sometimes life falls into a rut, even for the young who are living with elves. Oliver went to school during the day half the week and the other half of the week at night. He worked odd hours around his schedule, as did I. We didn’t see much of each other. It was lonely, really. I didn’t have much else to do but coursework, so semesters peeled by one after the next. I had my Masters of Science and Bachelors of Accounting degrees with no real motivation to apply either. When I was offered a grant for graduate school, the board of governors asked me what my intentions were for the future. I gave them the first answer that popped into my head, “Obviously, I have my Masters of Science and I intend on continuing with Microbiology. I’ll complete the program for Biophotonics…” Blah blah blah. My response was ultimately meaningless as I was losing interest in all of it. I was only going to school because Oliver wasn’t around and there wasn’t really anything else to do.

I didn’t know quite what was happening to my brain then. Hormones, I suppose. The ageing process had taken hold and I was no longer the ambitious girl I’d always been. I didn’t care anymore about much but relaxing. I'd lost my edge. I had no need to compete with anybody. I was satisfied and the things that had once driven me no longer were important.

I was still curious, though. Curious about everything imaginable, but I wasn’t much interested in being the one who discovered why some people get cancer at twelve and die while others who smoke cigarettes and dwell in polluted cities live to be one hundred. Someone else could find it out for me, tell me and I'd apply it. Where or how I would I never considered.

It was madness! There I was with two degrees in my hand, a graduate student with an exemplary average, ready to begin my career and I had no bottle left. I had always known I wanted to be a medical researcher. I had dreamed of the day when, like Carolyn Porco when she discovered the moons of Saturn, I'd be the one to learn something that no one else on the planet knew. I was right there on the precipice of it. I was not only a microbiologist, but about to be a Biophotonist, one of the elite in my field! I could have been sorting out ways to save the world, but I didn't want to.

What had always fascinated and intrigued me now was a bore. A nagging at my coat tail holding me back from my new pursuits, which included little more than spending time in my garden growing my plants or sitting under the big oak in the side lawn reading books.

I had lost my mind. Oliver was gone so often I think I would have been depressed, except I started talking to the trees.

I can’t explain it. But those trees, they seemed as if they wanted me to talk to them, so I would. For hours. “You know,” I told the one I liked to read beneath, “I’ve never loved a place as much as I have loved it here. And you’re a part of it. Every day I come out that door and you’re standing here. Every time I look out my kitchen window I see you. I’d like to be your friend, but I’m not sure how to be friends with a tree. A bird you can feed and leave water for. Same with squirrels and foxes. And a hare will always come for your cabbage, but what can I do to make a friend of a tree? I use your shade, you keep the rain off of me. I sit right here all the time on your roots and you never complain. So tell me, what can I do to reciprocate your kindness?”

Insane, really. Twenty-three years old, I was. Twenty-three years old living in a primitive little house, not wanting any kind of a career or future, still in love with the same boy I’d always been. And we were still broke, let me tell you. Oliver and I had no money at all, but what was already spent. Everything we owned was second hand but our clothes. I didn’t have a television or the internet because I still didn’t even have electricity. I wrote to my family and friends only occasionally and rang less than that. I had every reason to be bored out of my skull and want to run away. But I loved it there in the wood with Oliver and I never wanted to leave.

The wood was my home; my heart had become the winds.

I wasn’t feeling very well that day. I hadn’t felt very well for a couple of days. It was almost like I had the flu, but not. I was nearing the time of my monthly cycle and thought that was the problem, as I was bloated and nauseous and had terrible pressure in my lower abdomen and side. I rubbed my belly and groaned a little and then I lay back against the tree and looked up at the sky. The clouds were passing more quickly. There was a storm on its way.

My only sadness was that I still didn’t have any muffins. I hadn’t said a word to Oliver, as I promised myself I wouldn’t. But I was still a little worried that I might never have one. All kinds of people were making muffins. There were billions of muffins popping out of ovens all across the Earth. I only wanted one. It didn’t seem that that was too much to ask. My disappointment was mounting, but I brushed it off time and time again.

Maybe I was being selfish, I thought. After all, I had been duly blessed. I had a home, a husband who loved me, food to eat and faeries in my garden…maybe I shouldn’t even have wanted a baby. I was still happy that the Lord and the Lady had their boon. I wondered if it had been a boy boon or a girl boon or maybe even twins. I wondered if Oliver and I might have twin muffins. He had told me once that twins usually skips a generation, but maybe we could.