Janet hesitated at the edge of the forest, her hand resting on the tall, smooth trunk of an ash tree. Beyond the tangled and twisted agony of thorns and briars she could just make out the narrow, overgrown path; a winding serpent, it seemed to her, sliding between the bones of broken oaks, following the brook – its bubbling waters bloodied by iron - and slipping away into the shadowy heart of Carterhaugh Dell.

The damp earth was dark with velvet moss, soft and moist beneath her feet. She turned, looking back at the hoary vastness of the Twisted Oak: nothing more now than a lightening-charred silhouette on the brow of the hill that swelled between home and the edge of Seldom Forest. A solitary crow squawked and flapped amongst its ruined branches, then took flight, swooping low over the field and out of sight.

Janet had known the tree from childhood. She recalled the tales her grandmother had told her, with her rheumy eyes twinkling and her tobacco blackened tongue wet against broken teeth. It had been a dark and terrifying recounting of times long past when the tree was worshipped as a god and frenzied rites of bloody sacrifice were executed in its honor. The old crone had chuckled, with Janet sitting wide-eyed in the firelight, whilst the click and whirr of the spinning wheel tutted and sighed its rhythmic commentary. Her grandmother had told her that even then, at the dark of the moon, witches gathered under the crooked boughs of the ancient oak to perform their loathsome and diabolic rites. The venerable tree, thousands of years old even before the angry fires of heaven struck at its pagan heart and burned it to a hollow trunk, was the last vestige of a vast primordial forest that had once stretched from the southern coast all the way to the northern mountains. Janet shivered as she looked at it now.

The Oak stood brooding above her, a solitary ward guarding the boundary between the bright meadows of childhood memory and the dense, suffocating darkness of the wildwoods, of the faery haunted glades of a forbidden realm: forbidden from her earliest memory; on whose edge she now stood and into whose black embrace she now determined to throw herself.

Turning her back on the Twisted Oak, Janet put aside the prohibitions of childhood and taking up a stick from the woodland’s edge, began to beat back the overgrowth, following the muddied path that slipped away under the shivering branches of Seldom Forest.

Above her, the sullen sky thundered and groaned under the weight of the encroaching storm. The oak leaves, once pulsing with the verdant sap of summer’s passion were now blushed and bronzed and trembled, exhausted, under autumn’s cold caress. Dry and brittle they spiraled downward, rustling and crackling under her feet, the breeze whispering their memories amongst the creaking limbs of ragged thorns.

The ancient trees creaked and murmured as she passed. The chill wind tugged at her cloak with icy fingers. The earthy odors of fungi, leaf mould and damp moss hung heavy in the deepening gloom. The path dipped suddenly by a gnarled old holly tree and began to descend steeply down from the main body of the Forest and into Carterhaugh. Again, Janet hesitated.

The Dell had always been forbidden. It was a faery-haunted place. There was not a young girl she knew who had not been warned over and again of the dangers to her maidenhood threatened by that lustful and dangerous guardian spirit, Tam Lin. But then, what did the guarding of maidenhood matter to her, she thought, who had cast hers aside in joyful, giggling abandon as soon as she was of age?

And yet, her father’s grave warning still echoed in her memory. “And he’ll not be for caring that you threw your maidenhead away to some jack-ass Innkeeper some years since! He’ll take you and have you all the same. He’s not a farmhand or a village boy, remember that Janet. Tam Lin does not play games. Get in the rough with the likes of him and there’ll be trouble for all of us.”

And, she asked herself, was that what she intended to do now - to give herself to Tam Lin? Might she not as well sign her soul away to the very Devil?

She shook her head, pulled her cloak more tightly about her and took a few more paces forward. Then she stopped again, biting her bottom lip. What impulse was it that drove her on now to ignore the admonishments of paternal wisdom and chase her own folly? Her father had sent her to pick flowers, expressly forbidding her to go into Carterhaugh Dell, he had told her to pick flowers from the edge of the forest and be quick about it. And Lord Dorian was expected before nightfall. And if she should not be there when he arrived…his temper when angered was as notorious as his favors when pleased. Her breath quickened. She felt the tremor of fear, of excitement tingling through her flesh. The deep rumble of thunder sounded again in the distance. The first spots of rain broke through the tangled canopy of entwined branches and freckled the stones of the path with tiny splashes. She should turn about, she told herself. Turn about and go home. Go home to her father and her fate. To be a slave. She felt the hot flame of anger flare again in her bosom. And fear. But, she told herself, her father had reasoned well. And after all, what other choice was there to be made? And if she could win the special favor of Lord Dorian, perhaps this time even conquer a man’s heart as well as his body…who was to know what good might come of it? Might she not even become the Lady of the Castle and mistress of all Lord Dorian’s wealth and influence? She laughed aloud. Such insolence! Such brazen confidence! What, she asked herself mockingly, gave her the notion that any such thing would come to pass? Why should she not be, in his cynical eyes, just another whore in his collection of whores? Did she really want to make herself a wife to him? Was she really going to collude with her father in that ridiculous lie? Her laughter turned bitter in her throat as she struggled instead against the rising swell of frustrated and angry tears. The sky darkened even further, lightening flashed and the deep boom of thunder echoed over the valley, sounding to her like the mocking laughter of the gods. Janet set her face in grim determination, her emerald eyes glittering defiance, her creamy skin flushed at the cheeks.

She would venture into Carterhaugh and risk the consequences. There would be time, she reasoned, to go down into the Dell, pick flowers and return home before Lord Dorian arrived. Then she would submit herself to His Lordship and do everything he commanded. She would do it for her father’s sake, if not for her own. But she would not submit to anyone before she had followed this impulse that drove her into the Dell, not before she had taken this one last risk, made this one last wild, abandoned act of freedom and defiance before the term of her imprisonment began.

Besides, she thought, making her way down the steep path, one arm clasping her cloak at her breast, the other reaching out from time to time to steady herself on a nearby branch, she had never seen the fabled witches of her grandmother’s tales (despite childhood nights stolen in vigil overlooking the Twisted Oak) so why should she assume there to be any truth at all in these fanciful stories of Tam Lin? He would, she now convinced herself, gaining courage, prove to be nothing more than a figment of popular imagination, the product of idle gossip and old wives’ tales.

The path grew steeper and more treacherous the further she ventured and she slipped and tumbled more than once, muddying her skirts and tearing her cloak, thorns scratching her skin, before the ground leveled out again and she finally found herself, flushed and breathless, in the shady twilight of the Dell itself.

Janet paused a moment to catch her breath. She looked back up the path and realized what she had not thought of before: that the ascent would be much more troublesome than the climb down and slower, too.

The Dell was steep sided and damp: a shallow glade, overhung with ivy and creepers and strewn with moss-covered boulders of granite. Immediately, Janet felt the change in atmosphere. There was a profound stillness. No wind stirred the leaves, no bird sang. The glade felt to her not only deeply undisturbed by human presence, as indeed it was, but strangely concealed, hidden, set apart from the rest of the forest, from the rest of the world even. Janet felt the thumping of her own heart, a shivering sensation over her skin and the passing of her breath, warm and dry on her lips. For a moment, she dared not move, as if to do so would be to trespass on the otherworldly stillness of a place into which she was neither invited nor welcome.

It was nearly dusk. The light was fading fast. The already unfamiliar landscape of the Dell was rapidly vanishing, being occluded by a mournful veil of gloom and autumn mist. There was another abrupt explosion of white fire from the heavens. Janet counted the seconds. One, two, three. Thunder boomed. The storm was almost directly overhead. The lightning flashed again: an eerie illumination momentarily revealing a gash of blood-red flowers blooming under the upturned roots of a long- fallen tree. Another peal of thunder and the rain rattled through the trees with sudden violence.

Janet picked up her skirts and the long trail of her cloak and dashed across the dell towards the fallen tree. The rain battered against her skin, mud spattering her calves. She reached the tumbled roots, which seemed to writhe in the ghastly darkness like a nest of snakes. Another flash of lightning. The sudden brightness of the roses startled her. Janet reached out her slender hand to break a stem. A sharp shock of pain. A thorn. Blood ran through the creases in her palm. And there came a voice, carried on the wind, rich and sonorous and self-assured.

“Well, my pretty maiden, would you steal my roses?”

Janet span about, casting around through the murk for a glimpse of the speaker. But there was no one there.

“Who is it?” she breathed, trembling, the words catching in her throat. Another lightning flash momentarily lit the glade and for an instant she saw a figure, a little way off, standing under the shadow of an ancient oak. Thunder cracked. Lightning flashed again, and the figure was gone. The storm had shattered the stillness and an icy wind now whipped around her, snatching at her clothing and raising goose bumps on her skin. The rain was falling hard and fast now, soaking through her cloak and making it heavy and cumbersome, flattening her raven curls against her face and neck, running in rivulets between her breasts. She felt her nipples, stiffening in the cold, rubbing uncomfortably against the cotton of her undergarments. She spoke again, mustering strength into her voice, fighting a sense of panic that urged her to run.

“Who is there?”

There was no answer to her question but for the raging of the storm, the creaking laughter of the trees, the stinging wind and the rattling din of splattering rain. Then, suddenly, she felt fingers, light and cold, running over her back, tracing the length of her spine. Janet gasped and span round wildly but again there was no one to be seen. As the voice whispered again in her ear, she felt the breath on her neck, caught the musky scent of earth and wild berries.

“Would you steal my roses?”

Janet felt the brush of lips against her neck. Her heart pounded in her bosom. She felt herself trembling.

“No,” she breathed as her cloak clasp unfastened itself and the heavy fabric slipped from her shoulders. “I would not steal your roses.”

“Then, if take them you will, you must pay the price.” A cold hand slid over her right leg, dancing lightly over her tingling skin and moving up the inside of her thigh. Her blouse, soaked and clinging to the voluptuous form of her breasts was peeled away from her shoulder and she felt the soft wetness of a tongue at her hardened nipple. Was it fear, she asked herself, or pleasure that now caused little spasms of excitement in her pussy? And she knew that the wetness between her thighs was not merely rain. Her eyes closed. She lifted her face to the elements. There was a thrilling energy, an overpowering urgency in the sensations she felt at the touch of these unseen hands, lips, breath. She felt a finger brush her mound, sliding between her moistening labia…and suddenly she was warm. There was no wind, no rain, no growling thunder overhead. The only kisses on her skin that of spring sunlight. Birdsong thrilled the air. The scent of flowers carried on the soft breeze…

A shock of dread jolted her body. Her eyes snapped open. And she ran. But she found herself stumbling through long grasses, golden sunlight winking at her through a green canopy of new leaves. She was naked. She threw her back against the broad trunk of an oak, its bark warm and rough against her skin. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly with her breathing. Her hands clasped the oak, desperate for something solid, something secure to hold on to. She tried to calm herself, to reason. Where was she? How had she…? She closed her eyes a moment, shook her head. When she lifted her eyelids again, she saw him. There he stood, he little way off in the deep shadows of a beech, smiling at her.

She met his eyes with hers and felt for the first time in her life that it was not just her body but also the secrets of her heart, her very soul that stood naked before him. His eyes did not waver. She sensed his strength, his power. She wet her lips with her tongue then raised her head, still trembling slightly.

“Where am I?” she asked quietly.

“In Carterhaugh,” he answered simply.

“But…” she began, and found her confusion overwhelmed her and she could not formulate the question. He understood nevertheless and answered her.

“My time is not your time. My seasons not your seasons.”

“Who are you?”

“Would you steal my roses?”

“I’ve answered that question already.”

“Then you must pay the price.” But he made no move towards her.

“Why don’t you just take want you want? Isn’t that what you normally do? Well, I am not a maiden. There is nothing you can steal from me.”

“I do not wish to steal anything from you. It is you who have stolen from me.”

“They are not your roses,” replied Janet gaining confidence even as she felt increasingly confused: if this was Tam Lin, which surely it must be, why had he not simply taken her, as he must know that she would have no power to refuse him?

“Not my roses?” There was a curious intonation in his voice, somewhere between amusement and bitterness that she could not quite place.

“These lands and everything in them are the property of the Castle,” she continued boldly. “The roses, if they belong to anybody, belong to Lord Dorian.” She blew black curls from her face and looked at him defiantly, challenging his authority.

“Then, as I said, they are mine.”

Perplexed, but still determined, Janet ignored this obtuse reply.

“And so, sir,” she continued, stepping forward now, straightening her back, “these lands – and those roses – will also very soon be mine by right.”

He smiled again and raised an eyebrow. But he said nothing. In the brief silence that followed Janet felt herself flush with the discomfort of standing naked and humiliated before this man. She let her eyes fall to the soft earth. Then she spoke again, trying for conviction but hearing the emptiness of the lie even as it left her lips.

“I am to be married to Lord Dorian. I shall soon be the mistress of all these lands. And I shall have you banished from my forests. And there will be no more stealing of maidenhoods! The roses are mine. Now take me back to Carterhaugh!” She had hoped that the last sentence would have the ring of regal command about it but saw that he had heard the undertone of desperation in her voice.

“As I told you, you are still in Carterhaugh. You must pay the price.”

“Let me go!”

He raised his hands as if to say, who is holding you?

“I would rather that you were willing,” he said.

“Let me…” she began, but was cut short in the shock of what happened next.

From the bole of the oak tree, breaking through the mossy earth, green root-like tendrils shot upwards, lashing her legs to the tree by the ankles. She gasped as she felt her wrists similarly entwined and pulled fast around the trunk. Another whipped about her waist and yet another coiled at her neck. Those at her ankles twisted and twined, pulling her legs slowly apart, exposing her fully. Janet struggled but could not move, the power of the faery enchanted tree too great for her merely human limbs. She watched his eyes, where green leaf and sunlight reflected in a kaleidoscope of ever changing patterns; watched them roving, glittering with pagan lust, over her naked, defenseless body. He stepped towards her, out into the sunlight, through the long grass and she recognized for the first time that he was also naked. As he walked she witnessed the lean muscularity of his body: his innate, animal strength; the agility and grace of even his slightest movements; the otherworldly beauty of his face, his hands, his eyes. He stood now before her, so close that she could feel the heat of his flesh, see the beating of his heart, taste the delicious flavors of his breath. She met his eyes again and they looked at one another for a moment that seemed to hold and gently stay time from running its usual course.

“These forests are mine,” he said quietly and without malice. “I am the master here.”

Then his gaze fell from hers and followed the line of her neck, slid over her shoulders, lingering on the rising swell of her breasts, her dark, erect nipples, slipping over her tummy, her hips and thighs, lingering again over her glistening cunt, her legs, the prettiness of her bound feet. As he looked at her, it was to Janet as if he touched her. She felt his gaze scorch her skin. She trembled and shivered at the movement over her body: her lust, her desire, her desperate passion already more aroused, more raging and enflamed and sore than she had ever known possible.

She looked down and saw the movement between his legs, the tightening of his scrotum, the swelling of his penis as it grew, stiff and tight and straight: proud and handsome and twitching with eager desire. But still he made no move to take her.

He reached out and slid a finger over the side of her face, his hand then holding her head, his fingers stroking in the hollow at the back of her neck. At every touch, every slightest brush of his skin she felt the tingling of anticipated pleasures, of stirring lusts, of insatiable yearnings.

Then his fingers suddenly curled, gripping her hair in a tight knot. She gasped at the sudden tug of pain. She felt the throbbing length of his hardened shaft pressing against her as he leaned forward, brushing his mouth over her face, then gently biting her full lips, drawing a little blood, tasting it on his tongue. Tasting her life’s essence, she thought, making her a part of him. A little of her blood in exchange for his blood-red roses.

Her heart beat faster in her breast. He pressed against her harder, the rough bark of the oak grazing her naked back and buttocks. His other hand roved over her bosom, his nails scratching between her breasts. The sharp bite of pain made her squeal, tears stinging her eyes. His hand now sank down to her pussy, sliding between her labia, sticky and hot with her passion. He pressed his mouth against her mouth, his tongue pushing over her swollen lip, meeting hers in blissful, masterful struggle. The roots and tendrils that bound her tightened, chafing her skin. Janet felt her body shudder. He was utterly in control, commanding every fiber of her being. It is true, she thought through the conflagration of the sensuous agonies of pleasure that now rapt her body: he is the master; and I will be his slave and consort.

She had never known such arousal, such desperate need. He pulled his lips away from her and again their eyes met, a smoldering communication burning between their bodies, their souls. She no longer cared who he was, man or devil. She must give herself to him. He must take her.

“Take me!” she nearly screamed, “fuck me! Fuck me!” She felt the hot stain of tears over her cheeks. “Oh God, please! Fuck me! Please, please, fuck me!”

And her cries echoed through the trees as he entered her, the full burning length of his cock pulsing within her, the eruption of pain and pleasure exploding in her body and wracking her mortal soul. The twisting tendrils unbound her and she fell into his hot embrace.

How long they were rapt in the coils of such passion, Janet did not remember. She only knew the perfection of the seemingly eternal moments of bliss that followed; either as a dream, or perhaps, something even more real than anything she had ever known. Her next clear memory was kneeling on the green earth; her head buried into his abdomen, his hand gently stroking her hair. And she knew, for the first time, what it meant to love.

“Who are you, Tam Lin?” she had asked quietly. “ Are you truly one of The Folk?” She used the term most common amongst those she knew - her family, the villagers, and the seasonal workers who passed through the farmstead - the term used to refer to those strange faery beings of the Otherworld that haunted the dells and standing stones and secret places, with their capricious and often dangerous ways.

“No,” he replied softly, sadly. “I am a man, just as you find me now. But I am trapped in the Otherworld in the service of the Faery Queen. Indeed, I am, you might say, a little more than most men.”

“How do you mean?”

“I am Lord Dorian.” As Janet looked up at him and caught his eyes, she saw him smile at her troubled expression. “No, not that one in the Castle that uses my title, he is my younger brother, Crespus. I am the rightful heir to the title of Dorian.”

He sighed, and then laughed bitterly before continuing, his eyes closed, remembering.

“ Many years ago now, when he and I were barely more than boys, we were out hunting in the woods. We had been warned, of course, about the dell being a faery haunted place but we were young and brave and in high spirits, in the heat of the chase, hot on the cloven hooves of a magnificent, white stag. Well, when we entered here, Carterhaugh, the stag vanished. Just vanished. Our dogs, only moments before agitated by the hunt, cowered and whimpered and whined, their tails between their legs. My horse bucked and threw me. I landed hard on the ground, winded. Then, quite suddenly, it was as if I was dragged, dragged by unseen hands, down into the earth. I looked up and saw Crespus, my brother, looking down at me from his horse. He made no move to save me, although I cried out to him. He simply watched as I was stolen away. He did nothing. I remember his eyes. They were cold; empty of all feeling it seemed to me. Then I found myself in the faery realm, as you do today. Only I am trapped here, between two worlds, at the bidding of the Faery Queen. I guard the dell, and her precious, bittersweet roses; and I exact the price from any maiden foolhardy enough to venture here to pick them. I have no choice. Not that many come, of course. Not now.”

“But how can it be? They were warned of Tam Lin when my grandmother was a child!”

“Aye, well, you think Tam Lin my name? No, it is my title. My name is Ruan. There was another Tam Lin before me and there will be another after me.”

“After you? Is there death also in the Otherworld? I thought…”

“No, there is no death in the Kingdom of the Faeries,” he said bitterly. “But I shall burn in the fires of hell to pay for their immortality.”

Janet grasped his hands in hers. “What are you saying?”

“The land of Faery lies between the worlds, Janet, hidden in the secret earth. It is neither of Heaven, nor of Hell. When Lucifer and the rebellious angels were cast from Heaven, they fell like burning stars. But some did not complete their descent into the eternal sufferings of the realm of devils but hid themselves, trapped within the earth. In the trees and the stones and the ancient hills and hidden streams. And they were the beginnings of the Faery Race. They escaped their judgment by the wrath of God, but they did not escape their allegiance to Lord Lucifer. To maintain their immortal state, the Queen of the Faeries is obliged to pay a ransom to Hell every seven years. And the price of that ransom is a human soul. And that soul is to be mine.”

Janet felt her blood run cold. Even under the warm rays of the sun, she shivered. She gazed at his beautiful face, her hands still firmly in his, and her voice issued from her lips already dry and broken.

“When is this ransom due?”

Tam Lin smiled a strange and joyless smile, tenderly stroking her upturned face.

“Tomorrow night. Midnight on the Night of the Dead, All Hallows Eve.”

“And is there no way to save you?”

“Aye, there is,” he answered, pulling her to her feet. “There is a way.”

Then he opened his mouth to speak again, but Janet never heard what he was about to say. For at that same moment there came the thundering of a horse’s hooves and the sounding of a wailing horn echoing through the Forest. Janet span round as into the glade galloped the Queen of the Faeries, in beautiful and terrible aspect, tall and strong and steeled by anger. Her muscular milk-white steed reared up once then stamped and snorted, his great hooves digging at the earth, shaking his shaggy mane, chomping at his bit, tinkling the silver bells on his harness. Then the Queen spurred him on and rode towards them.

Janet saw that the Queen’s eyes were on her. Unwavering, challenging, burning with a power and a passion that she could not bear. Then suddenly she felt Ruan’s hands tugged away from her. She tore her eyes back, away from the Queen. But Ruan had gone. Then Janet’s throat closed around a scream as the Queen raised her hand to strike and the great horse reared up before her, its heavy hooves kicking above her head.

Janet hit the ground hard. The rain pelted her like a thousand tiny stones. She pulled herself upright, slipping in the mud, her sodden clothes torn and soiled. Lightening flashed. Thunder rumbled. A bitter moon blinked behind shreds of cloud. The wind whipped her tortured flesh. She forced herself through the darkness, stumbling through the thorn thickets, dragging herself up the slope, grasping at roots and rocks to steady her. At last she broke out of the edge of the forest and saw the Twisted Oak illuminated in a flash of lightening. And she ran.