Morning at the Elvin Oak

Kensington Gardens, London

Shhh. It's early enough for them not to be expecting visitors from the mortal world. If you step very lightly, and look sidelong, or between your legs, or just let your eyes slip a little out of focus, you may see them as they live and play, even without fairy dew on your eyelids.
    There is so much going on! There is romance in full bloom but - wait - there is something foxy here too, an alert that nothing is straightforward in this realm, at least not by human reckoning.
 

  There are beautiful young ladies with streaming hair, in flowing gowns of white and blue. They look like princesses who have been drawn to the magic of this elvin world.

    But - wait - they are behind bars and there are strange beings doing strange things around them.

Are they captive souls, lured here by fairy wiles, and replaced in their home world by changelings? Or are they souls that fled here, to this realm of magic, because the world where they were growing up was too cold and too cruel to bear? Or are they dream travelers?

 Perhaps that little dog could let me know the answer. Dogs have always been reliable guides, for me, in world-hopping.

But on second glance that may not be a dog and his owner may not be friendly.

I could ask the lords of the Elvin Oak, but they look haughty and are nearing the end of their long night revels.

    I don't think I'll ask the witch lady. She looks like she belongs behind bars.

    Stepping back, with ordinary focus, I read the explanation for the bars. It makes perfect sense, if you live outside the world of the Elvin Oak. On the inside, it looks like humans are the ones who are living behind bars they have created to protect themselves against a direct encounter with the old ones of Faerie.

Photos of the Elvin Oak in Kensington Gardens (c) Robert Moss