Picture The Third.

You will be used to pictures of trees from me, but this one is nowhere near me or my forest. This is a tree reputed to be really, truly enchanted. It is a faerie tree.

It is a stone’s throw from a bustling rill-singing Cornish river, and closer still to an old forgotten saint’s shrine. St Torney, like their other saints, is as as dear to the Cornish as their stones, and their fairies as real to them as the money which rings in the tills from thousands upon thousands of laden tourist-purses.

This tree is far from roads. Locals would put flowers at its feet as an offering, and processions trail from the church on the hill to St Torney’s riverside shrine.

Go there, one day. Or if you can’t, seek out a faerie tree on the banks of a river in your neck of the woods.

May you stand at the tree’s feet and close your eyes and listen to the sound of the river bubble up though the soles of your feet, coursing up your legs, straightening your weary spine, frothing to your fingertips and filling your head with green-man virility, with Eorthen love and fruitful grace, with a wisdom borne of more than your years, and with something akin to wild true untamed happiness.

There’s a spell for you.