Lud-In-The-Mist

by Hope Mirrlees

Then Duke Aubrey raised his arms high above his head and cried out in a loud voice, ‘By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West!’ At these words the uplands became bathed in a gentle light and proved to be fair and fertile – the perpetual seat of Spring; for there were vivid green patches of young corn, and pillars of pink and white smoke, which were fruit trees in blossom, and pillars of blue blossom, which was the smoke of distant hamlets, and a vast meadow of cornflowers and daisies, which was the great inland sea of Faerie. And everything – ships, spires, houses – was small and bright and delicate, yet real. It was not unlike Dorimare, or, rather, the transfigured Dorimare he had once seen from the Fields of Grammary. And as he gazed he knew that in that land no winds ever howled at night, and that everything within its borders had the serenity and stability of trees, the unchanging peace of pictures.