Lady Margaret lay in the brush behind the old, crumbling stone well, just where her Tam Lin had told her to wait. She breathed as softly as she could, with her hand on her navel, just as her Tam Lin had told her to do. There was absolute silence: no bird chirped, no squirrel squeaked, not even a familiar breeze murmured to remind her that this was her wood, the wood her father had given to her, the wood where she had met her elfin boy. On the ground she waited, waited for the midnight hour when the Hallowe’en would turn to Hallowday, and the cheerful fairy riders would come. She set her eyes on the green hill, barely seen through the thick canopy, where Tam Lin, once an earthly christian like herself, had been kidnapped from his hunting party by Titania the Fairy Queen. The cracks of branches and distant heavy tread of stallions filled Lady Margaret with the dread of a thousand devils and the joy of a million roses. First through the path came a party of two dozen kelpies, laughing and whinnying. Some came in the form of shiny black ponies, with marble eyes and silk manes. Some came in the form of beautiful maidens, with polished hooves to give away their true nature. They carried silver mirrors and bottles of wine, and their only covering was their long dark hair, still slick from the rivers and lakes they had emerged from. Their lips were stained red, and even the ponies wobbled as they cantered down the lane. One kelpie rode on the back of another and held her empty bottle forward, like a maiden general leading her charge. A haunting fairy ballad could be heard from some far part of the parade, and the Kelpies slurred as they sang along in some strange assonant dialect. “Fear me not, for I am the father of your bairn,” Tam Lin had said to her. She thought of his deep brown eyes, and the weary joyful look of his face. It had been four months since she had met him first in the forest, and only a week since he had stopped her from swallowing that bitter herb from the forest that would have stopped their child which now grew in her. She shortened her breath and clutched her petticoat. The music grew, and close behind the kelpies came a rank of one dozen fairy men with green jackets and iron boots. They carried great pikes which bobbed together and golden daggers which hung at their belts. They wore box pleated kilts, and their legs were as skinny as twigs. They stepped together and breathed together and blinked together. Around their crimson eyes, pale skin wrinkled and thick brown brows creased. They were shorter still than the Lady Margaret, but they were a hundred times more fierce. Wide red caps drooped over their ears, and bounced with their pikes as they marched. Behind their rank, the band came, playing a wild, careening, syncopated tune. Four shackled naked men shuffled along. The first was the vocalist. Three boggarts followed him, lashing him with nine-tailed whips. His wails careened in between notes, never quite landing on them. The next man carried a mighty crooked elfin contrabassoon, which he bore on his bent back. His arms were broken at the elbows, and his hands wrapped behind him to play the valves. The bocal to which the mouthpiece was connected was long and winding, and stretched to the boggart marching along behind the bassoonist. His notes were deep and coarse, and the metal valves of the instrument rattled and shook. Margaret pressed her hands into her feet to keep herself from standing up and dancing. The next was a man with his back flayed, and as he passed by Margaret could see his heart beating along to the music. His spine was carved into a great flute, and a boggart sat backwards on the man’s hunched shoulders blowing wispy, scratchy notes that tickled the leaves. Another boggart walked alongside him, playing his lungs like bagpipes, throwing screaming, strident cries like arrows. The final player was a man with a lute nailed to his hand. Blood dripped down the sheep-gut strings, and his fingertips were cut from playing so vigorously. His strumming hand was a blur, and the strings oscillated so fast that they only appeared to be swaying like the branches of the fir. “There will come three riders,” Tam Lin had told Lady Margaret. “Let the first one pass, he will ride on a black horse. Let the second one pass, he will ride on a brown horse. When the rider on the white horse approaches, know that it is your lord Tam Lin. Tear me down, hold me tight and fear me not, for I am the father of your bairn.” The rider on the black horse was a massive man, who sat straight and rigid on his mount. He wore a thick black overcoat, and a long golden sabre hung from his saddle. On his head he wore a dark walnut-wood mask which encompassed his head. In it was carved a thick twisted mustache and sloping, angry eyebrows. The lips were pursed into a little hole about the size of the top of an acorn. Two similarly sized holes made for eyes, and two more the flared nostrils of the mask’s broad nose. A dozen more of the same holes dotted the rest of the mask, like honeycomb, each of them completely opaque with shadow. The rider sucked on a long, spindly ceramic pipe through the mask’s lips, and when he exhaled the smoke glided out of all the holes at once. The rider on the brown horse was a slumped corpse, with a heavy cloud of flies around it. It had long dirty hair and wore only rags, and Lady Margaret could smell the acrid rot on it from the path. Its teeth showed through a hole in its right cheek, and its eyeball hung out a little too much. Every minute or so, it would lurch up in its seat and start to sing along with the band. When it did, the flies would abandon it for its horse, and its lice would crawl back from its horse’s mane into its matted hair. Once the corpse remembered it was dead, they would all switch back again. The final rider wore a golden doublet and a red cloak, the traditional outfit of the Fairy Queen’s septennial tithe to hell. His hair hung in his face, and his bonnet was pulled low, but Lady Margaret knew he was her Tam Lin.