When he rejected me again and I started to really wonder what I was dealing with, I ducked into my tent and zipped it closed. Again, I could hear him cleaning things up and almost with the sky losing its light, he disappeared into his tent. Since his directions were to stay inside the tent until morning light, I considered what to do. Which is really saying I was deciding how long I should wait to leave the tent and find Mr. skunk or Ant or anything that wasn’t Ethan. I needed answers and if he wasn’t going to be more forthcoming then I needed to find someone or something that would be.

With the sun now down and enough time having slowly passed by, I opened the tent door and looked out and I felt fear. Thinking back on the night before, I’d felt fear then as well. Especially when Ant was just sitting outside. I half expected him to be sitting there, but he wasn’t.

I took a deep breath and started to step through the doorway when I felt an even bigger wave of fear and other emotions wash over me. Since I’d never felt these things before, I wondered what was happening to me. And since emotions and fear had never even true in my rather significant and long life, I decided to ignore them. Another deep breath and another wash of fear and emotion later and I was somehow standing on the other side of the tent and …

Everything was perfectly fine. The forest was still there. Ethan’s tent was still where it had been earlier. Even the table and chairs were still in place. It took me a moment to gather myself after having had to work through the overwhelming feelings and once I did I oriented myself toward the skunk path I’d located earlier and stepping on the balls of my feet, slowly, one step at a time, I quietly made my way to where I’d remembered seeing it.

It didn’t take long to find. The path was exactly as I expected it to be and what was more surprising there were other paths. In fact, I could see all kinds of animal paths and trails, there were also trails for other kinds of creatures. Feeling them was still a problem, but being able to see the things I expected to see in a forest was reassuring. It was also one of those things that suggested Ethan was not what he presented himself to be. Though what he presented himself to be was exactly what I was seeing.

The next thing I did didn’t seem like it should be surprising, but when I took one additional step into the forest, suddenly the life of the woods and animals, the trees and underbrush, everything seemed to come into clear focus and for the first time since leaving the faerie ring I found myself no longer hungry or desperate and very aware of the world around me as well as the area around Ethan’s camp.

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Somehow, and I there is no other way to explain it, Ethan was able to block the very essence of my being. I took a deep breath in, inhaling the world and what felt like my life, and then I opened my eyes, I didn’t even know they were closed the world was suddenly so real all around me, that I was surprised to see the animals one would expect to see gathered in small groups all around me.

There were deer and elk, small animals and a three bears. I could smell the skunks before I saw them and I could sense Ant even though I couldn’t see him. The world that had almost been dead to me was suddenly very much alive and awake and I couldn’t believe just how much I needed it and missed nature.

“You’re here,” a woodchuck said. “They said you were here, but I didn’t believe them and then here you are.”

I smiled at the woodchuck and then at the other animals. There was a lot of chittering and noise coming from all around and I had to admit that it felt really good to be recognized and wanted.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“There was an event,” the woodchuck said.

“Do you have a name?” I asked the woodchuck.

She shook her head No.

I nodded and she proceeded to tell me about a massive change in the world during one of the last king’s (or maybe it was a queen’s) reigns. There was nothing concrete about what had happened or to whom or why or much of anything, but something had happened and the outcome was a slow dissipation of the natural powers of the world around them until one day the castle was gone and the people were gone and there was nothing left.

“Which is why it’s so amazing that you’re here. We’ve been trying to talk to you, to get you to notice us, but you just didn’t and then someone said the jackalope’s had sent one of theirs and tonight here you are. You can see us.”

“Where are the jackalopes?” I asked.

The woodchuck, who I was mentally calling Olga, was off on a different tangent about how the jackalopes don’t get involved in things and even if they did there was very little they could do for any of them, or me, and that it was time the forest started to change again and one of the first things we needed to do, the collective we meaning all of the animals and me, was to take care of the problem Ethan presented.

“He’s not one of us,” a squirrel said and then disappeared into a hole in the tree where it stored food for the winter.