Having those children running in and out of our home – the famed Eastward Manor that my wife Trudy and I proudly took ownership of many years ago – was a new experience, to be sure. Of course, this was while the house and grounds were filled with creatures of folklore legend, and they were also coming and going – that is, with our help, and with Mary’s help. Those “folkies” were ultimately saved from the terrible villainy of the Old Woman of the mountains and her servants.
But the human children, for me, were just as interesting. Arty-the-logical covered with dirt, Emma overcome by a spell stronger than her independence, Cry’s simple, emotional wisdom, and Ted filling every room he enters with unapologetic directness.
I had no idea I would be in over my head more with the human teens than with the legion hundred-year-old wood elves helping to tunnel through walls in the basement. I admit I was jealous of them: they only managed a few days of following clues – or actually of having fairies land in their laps! – and were rewarded with the experience, the adventure, of a lifetime.
It took me years. Many years. And many false starts.
But I have one advantage on the kids: when they try to finally tell the whole story, the full tale, of the invasion and usurpation of the Gwyllion, of the gathering forces on both sides, of the mercenary Dwarves, and the specially gifted rescuers, they won’t be able to. Only myself – and my wife, and Mary – at long last know all that came before.
So while Arty sought to learn more of the Dwarves, their reappearance, and their new troubles, and Emma trotted off to Scotland in search of fairy roots, and Cry and Ted enjoy a new popularity and a luck that seems, indeed, fairy-blessed – I documented one hundred years of preparation for the Great Gwyllion War, and the history of Eastward Manor. All those clues stuffed away in books and hidden in libraries came from somewhere, you know.
