Maybe it's a function of ancestral memory, a child's recollection of stories told across time, of banshees and fairies, of poems recited, such as "The Stolen Child" from W.B. Yeats: "Come away, O human child!/To the waters and the wild/ With a faery, hand in hand,/ For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
Fiona believes in the little people.
Fairies and sprites, gnomes and tomtens - and the occasional troll. They populate her forests and her islands; they gather in her dreams.
And she is convinced that they are in need of shelter.
. . .
Fiona and her friend Emily built their first fairy house three autumns ago in a neighbor's wood in New Hampshire. They raised birch-bark walls at the base of an ancient hemlock. Laid flooring of the softest white pine leaves. Stocked the pantry with fallen acorns, stacked a winter's worth of well-seasoned cordwood outside the door. The whole creation measured no more than eight inches wide.
The next day, our neighbor discovered something on her morning walk.
Leaning against the fairy house was a piece of birch bark, inscribed with curious script:
"Dear Fairy House Builders,
We love this house! It is the only one in the woods. It is getting very full - we fairies are bumping into each other since there are so many of us in the house. When that happens, a little fairy dust gets spilled! We were wondering if you would have time to build an addition?! Thank you from all the fairies."
The note was written in blue (the juice of mashed blueberries, we decided) and glittered faintly with what could only be fairy dust.
. . .
Monhegan Island is a tiny bauble in the sea, a head of land some 10 miles off the Maine coast, about halfway between Kennebunk and Bar Harbor. It is a fishing village and an artists' colony, a solid Maine village in winters that swells with ranks of tourists in the summer.
Hiking trails lace through Monhegan's woodland and coastline; seals bask on rocks. Beach roses line the roadsides, there are bindweed and sweetfern in the meadows, bayberry and blueberry and beach plum near the shore, snapdragons and poppies swaying in gardens.
People say the wee folk favor this place.
