For a while, because it had been necessary to convince Ned of his right mind, John had wrestled himself back into the plain Dale of his birth. Now he burst out again. Both he and the whole countryside seemed somehow bigger, wilder, and in every way more beautiful. Middleton Dale burst into flower. The houses seemed pillared and roofed with trees. A profusion of roses scrambled over every door, flinging untimely perfume into the November air. The memory of his old mastiff Hal padded at his left hand, big as a horse, the glory of all dogs in his ugly jowls and bullish neck.

A wood like a jewel was set in the midst of the Dale. John went in and found the beech-trees bearing apples and peaches and plums and golden pears. In the midst of the wood the crossroad met. At the crossroads stood St Martin’s under the moon.

And its bells were ringing, no longer plain and silver and dutiful, but wild cascading peals of joy as brisk and merry as the stream that flowed crystal-clear down the path from the door. Unheeding, John leaped to the threshold with the water laughing over his feet. All the inside of the chuch was hanged, like the song said, in funereal splendour with black and purple.

He crossed the threshold. The sound of bells faded far away. They tolled for victory, but here at the heart of triumph was a memorial to defeat.

The whole floor of the church was a pool of water. John waded through it, stepping softly, for he was shy of what he might find here. Instead of an altar a bed had been made up on the dais and the stone effigy of a knight lay there upon cloth-of-red and cloth-of-gold, with the wounds plain to see upon his body as if he had been slain in battle. Under this bed the water had its spring. By its side a figure knelt with palms pressed together and stone eyes weeping tears of stone—the statue of a lady forever mourning.

She kneeled upon a slab like a gravestone in the floor. John bent down and saw words carved into the stone.

Rosa Mundi.

But the stone was broken. Cracked in half from top to bottom. Out of the rich black earth beneath a thorn was growing, and it had flung its arms around the foot of the knight’s bed, blooming prodigally with red blossoms.

Here. Here all along, if he had only had the eyes to see it.

John took his knife from his belt and carefully parted the closest rose from its stem. Full-blown as it was, words echoed in his mind—“fair and full of flesh”… Instead of a pearl at the centre, a drop of spring-water trembled in the rose’s heart.

Cradling the flower in his hands as gently as a first-born child, John backed away from the knight-in-effigy, not entirely sure what to say, but certain he should say something. In the end he said grace. Then he turned and began to walk.

He was passing the smithy when Ned ran out as if watching for him. “John!”

John turned, still cupping the Rose in his hands.

Ned flinched and threw up a hand as if to shade his eyes from blazing splendour. “John?”

Whatever he saw, some fear seemed to hold him in the smithy door. John laughed.

“I have found what I came for,” he cried. “I am going back into Faerie now. Wait for us.”