Winter Solstice
A Beginning
Hello, Friends ~ Good Solstice to you!
This will be my last post in Roots & Branches before Christmas, as I’ll resume Wednesday’s installment of Through The Yew Hedge the following week.
I want to share the Prologue of my novella with you on this turning point of the year. It feels like a doorway into the book, taking place the night the story begins…
Through The Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic by Islay Corwin
PROLOGUE
“Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild with a faery, hand in hand.” - William Butler Yeats, “The Stolen Child”
The Foretelling
Under the stark flicker of fluorescent lights, white moths flutter cryptic scripts: What does Virgo portend? The prophecy of place and time, the raison d’être? She, the child of changing seasons, was pushed into the Autumn Equinox, delivered in sorrow on the first day of fall under a sapphire sky, on the cusp of Libra, the Just.
The bus ticket vibrates in the Ellen’s coat pocket, her choice like the weight of lead: an escape, a remedy, but not a salvation. She trembles as she sets the baby basket behind the farthest bench, out of the cold gusts of wind that rush across the concrete platform.
She pins her plea, penned in loss and stained by tears, to the Mercy Shelter baby blanket: Protect Ruth Ann, Sweeten her life.
She places a memory, a kiss like honey and salt on her infant’s forehead.
The Taking
Three elvish figures, wearing sparkling silver and green, emerge through the ticket-booth surveillance mirror, luminous and clear in their purpose. The mother shudders at their chiming voices as they stand full height around her baby. In the shelter’s shiny surfaces, in reflections, familiar and foreboding, they cajoled her as they do now, until, distraught, she acquiesces to their coaxing in the twilight:
Your baby will be safe, she’ll be found, assures Eleris. In the ancient garden, she’ll come into her heritage, predicts Cedra. Under the human’s care, under our vigilance, she shall blossom. She’ll bridge worlds, promises Selwyn.
Accepting she is flawed and cannot properly mother, Ellen turns to board the waiting bus.
Hurry! Harmful fumes! The fae shriek, they shape shift, they shrink. They lift the baby in her basket, disappear into the reflective portal, and float on the Winter Solstice breeze to the Garden where blue morning glories bloom in the snow.
© Mary Ellen Gambutti 2025
Through The Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic
by Islay Corwin
Thank you for sharing this turning moment with me!
May the Solstice brighten what waits in shadow.
You might like to read the first full episode here:
Winter Solstice Prologue into Part One: Ruth Ann — The Gift
Love the image and the writing!