After that one kiss in the forest all Tristram can think about is the gorgeous, musty smell of her. And the big eyes and how he will lie in wait for her in the forest every single day until ... until ... well, until she holds his hand. And lets him kiss her again. And maybe what does putting your tongue in someone's mouth even feel like? Isn't it yucky? Or...no, maybe it's nice and she'll like it. And after that what should he do next? Put his arms around her and press up against her and... We'll leave him to it. We know exactly where this sort of fantasy is headed and we know just why Tristram is sneaking off behind the bushes where no-one can see him for a few sweaty minutes.

Collunda tries not to think about anything. Just goes home and puts the violets in a vase on the table. Then she sits and stares at them for an hour. The House watches her jealously. Is she suddenly going to become a flower faery and lose interest in it? Why all the sighing?

"Oh, House. Do you think he likes me?" she whispers and the House understands. Its adored, tempestuous mistress is in love! Slow House-thoughts occur. Love for a human must be like...finding a lovely garden to settle in or, or...growing a new room or part. The House remembers how it felt when Collunda coaxed the fungus on its roof to grow a whistle. It tootles quietly to itself. Nothing is better than a new part, nothing! It wriggles its new toes. There must be something it can do to help. Collunda pulls her cloak around her and goes outside.

That night is the darkest of the month. Starry but moonless. Collunda's interest in rot and fermentation has led her to experiment with new recipes for metheglin. The combination of potent liquor and daydreams about Tristram means that she has had one glass too many. She weaves her way along a woodland path and suddenly she isn't in Side any more. She has slipped through a little crack in the universe that she knows of so that she can indulge her feelings in another time and place. Summer in the Scottish Highlands. About 62 AD. It isn't fair. A young girl, faery or not, awash with all those feelings and frustrated without really knowing why walking through sweet-scented woods full of plants having it off with insects and each other right in front of her. Even if she doesn't know what is going on she must be picking up on all that sensual sexual energy. Leaves tickle her skin, grass stems brush against her thin skirts, scents call to her. She wishes Tristram was there with her. Holding her hand. Did that dark and fiery look he had given her mean anything? Did the kiss mean ...?

"Tristram!" she sobs just to see what it sounds like. And then she stumbles into a glade full of the most beautiful beings she has ever seen.

"Ho-la!" says something bronzed and muscular and bathed in firelight that twinkles off its leather and studs and muscles and muscles and muscles. When he stands up he towers over her all pectorals and dark eyes but the hand that takes hers is gentle and he settles her on a log by the fire with a folded scarlet cloak under her as a cushion. The bottle in her pocket clanks against the wood so she pulls it out and offers it to him.

"Oho!" he says softly. He touches her hand when he takes it from her. After he has a swig and his eyes stop watering he passes the bottle on. There are five of them around this fire all dark and handsome and very tall. Not only that but there are faery maids with them sipping at Collunda's bottle and giggling. There are more fires too, all across the little valley. More of the tall beings. And more faeries. An arm goes around her. A gentle thumb strokes her cheek. She turns to look at him and he kisses her. Her mouth opens under his and she is lost.

Hormones.

Terrible things.

#

But, hang on, what's happening? Where are we? Who are they?

My naughty mother wandering around that cosmic potato patch has slipped down a stalk to Ancient Rome.

"Oh," sighs Collunda, reminiscing, "Oh, those Brindisi Boys!"

Specifically, these 5,000 young Roman men from Brigantium and Brindisi, the Spanish end of the Empire, camped in a Highland valley. Bless them all, the long and the short and the tall. Especially the tall. See them now, marching along a straight track in Northern Britannia. You can sing along if you like:

We are big and we are strong

We keep going on and on

But where are they going? Tanned, olive, Mediterranean flesh shows below the leather battle skirts. Biceps peep out from leather jerkins. Oh, those Brindisi Biceps!

Faeries watch us from the trees

We think that they like our knees

The soldiers think the watchers are the Picts. The little Northern people. Short, dark and bad-tempered. In fact they have left the Picts far behind because the Picts know that further north it just gets steeper and colder. And more magical. The soldiers don't mind being watched. After all, these are the boys of the ninth Hispania, Legio Nones, known as Good Lads wherever they have served, all across the Empire. These are the lads who bounced back and finally trounced Boadicea; The lads who built the fortress at Eboracum. Dark and stocky with bright white teeth and bull-fighting dancer's poise. Straight eyebrows match the angles of their cheekbones. They must be going somewhere.

We've been marching, sinister, dexter

All the way from friggin' Leicester

The Empire is changing. Mithras, the bull-god, born to a virgin in the dark of the year and worshipped with wine and bread, is being pushed aside by the New God, that ultimate Youngest Son, Jesus, who, funnily enough, was born to a virgin in the dark of the year and is worshipped with wine and bread. The sacred labyrinth is simplified into a cross but otherwise ditto on all counts except the New God's demands for exclusivity. A battlefield full of sharp implements and exposed skin is no place for temperamental and exclusive gods who want you to love your enemies. The Ninth weren't having any of it. They wanted Mithras, who didn't mind who you worshipped provided you worshipped him as well. And they wanted their traditional deities: The Manes of their ancestors, the Pentares of the larder (it was hungry work, slaughtering barbarians) and the Lares, who were immanent in their household effects. They wanted to live in a world where everything still had numina: an inner divine essence. They wanted to sleep in tents that cared about them, fight with swords that wanted to be sharp, strap on sandals that loved to walk. No jumped-up Patrician in a purple frock was going to tell them otherwise. They had turned north, away from the empire and the mad new Youngest Son and they had kept going.

We're the Ninth and we all sing

We see gods in everything

It's always been a mystery what happened to them. After they went up North the Romans stopped talking about them. Not mentioned in dispatches. Not even in the Imperial Accounts. That's how Rome did these things –– official, wax-sealed denial. The Ninth had done something despicable, dishonourable, un-Roman. I think we're about to find out what it was.

Here in this remote valley they all settle down to a last meal before the final hike north. Slabs of highland salmon pass down through all those robust intestines under those glorious six-packs until it plops into the pool in Hel reserved for baked and eaten fish. Yup, that's the Glorious Ninth, off to adversity and notoriety. Wait, the wise salmon in that pool in Hel is saying something.

"Don't go too far, boys."

Well, that's the trouble, isn't it? When you go too far and all Hel breaks loose. That's what too far means.

The faery maidens watch them with Pictish curiosity.

"Grant you three wishes, soldier?"

It's all pretty predictable:

"I wish you'd come here and sit down beside me, cara mio. I wish you'd snuggle up a bit closer, mea columba, dove of my dreams. I wish you'd make a poor soldier-boy who's miles from home happy."

"I'll be the lux in your ombre, hombre."

Little faeries with sweet, wicked faces. The legionnaires of the Ninth think they are doing the seducing. They can't distinguish smallness from innocence. They don't immediately understand that the hands on their bodies are entirely adult and practiced. As for the faeries, they see gods akin to Pan. Great hairy brutes with indefatigable thighs who can march for days and still have perfect smiles and great hair at the end of it. They sing silly songs. But then, so do the faeries.

Over blossom, under rain

We sprites play the faery game

The Ninth heard 'wee' sprites and looked around for something even smaller than their faery lovers. But the faery game is survival. Surviving each other. And to do that, they need tall, strong children.

The faeries tap on the wooden shields. "Knock, knock! Scusi scutum! Oh Cassius, what's this naughty thing under your kilt? Your leather kilt, hur hur hur! Do you wear all that armour to keep it in or me out?" Heading into battle ever after, the Ninth will murmur "knock on wood" and snicker. The soldiers lie warm in a soft cocoon of light o' the moon love spells, kissing with their warm Mediterranean lips and murmuring their stories of olive groves and vineyards and dolphins. Pookies, agree the faeries, kissing them back with cool lips flavoured with Northern Lights and heather honey.

Pookie, pookie, pookie

Oh, the hookie pookie

Put your left leg in, just here, no silly, not there. Ahh, that's it. A dark forest glade near the Roman camp. A balmy-for-once evening in the highlands. Sighing and breathing all in rhythm until the whole glade is pulsing. Huh, huh, huh. And these little faeries are grinning from Taezolorum to Epidium because their children will be darker, handsomer and above all taller than the other faeries. These little faeries took their wares to market and went wee wee wee all the way home with great big warrior sons.

It's like picking brambleberries

Getting it off with legionaries.

The Ninth don't mind. This is the first time they've felt warm since leaving Icius Portus. It's heat in the blood, a sweat-sheen along a jawline, the damp buff on a perfectly-toned abdomen, a lean buttock as it rises and falls, everybody plunging and crying out, warm flesh rubbing against flesh in a dizzying spiral of "don't stop" and "make it last forever".

No, I don't know where they put their wings.

Unless the wings, too, hum faster and faster and Septimus, with no stained-glass windows in his history, lies on his back, mouth half-open, panting and watching his dream of virtue seduced unfold such colours around his head – colours that he has only glimpsed briefly before: in the sunlight through blue glass bottles, in ripe lemons, in the mosaic eyes of goddesses, the Aurora Borealis –– until something bursts in him and in her and they cry out a roar of triumph with all the rest so that the whole wood shudders. And then takes a few deep breaths. Phew.

Nearby mountains shift a little. "Can we all get some sleep now?" But this is just a hiatus. There's a capacity for endurance here. These are killers, remember, outnumbered in disputed territory.

All the best things come in pairs

Just like us and our legionnaires

Smallness does not equal innocence. The Devil is a short man, wet-mouthed like a dog. Tickle him under the chin and you'll come away with a handful of the drool that has collected in his beard. Handsome devils come in small packages. Tiny pieces of evil: A grain of arsenic in a glass of wine. A match struck near a tinder pile. A burst of electrons to a detonator.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

All we took was one small step

We sank straight out of our depth

Back to that turbulent wood where things are stirring again. Faeries, impatient with their Latin lovers.

"Mea Columba, let it lie."

"No, get it up, lazy legionary!" Peaseblossom wanting her pounding of flesh and teaspoon of reward. Sticky teaspoon, silver in the moonlight, born with it in her mouth, among other places. "Tell me about the places you've been."

"I've been here ... and here ... and I'm intending to come over there ..."

The soldiers have been trained to keep going no matter what. Tread lightly on the earth. Lightly but firmly. Press down, then release, like footsteps in soft turf or a tiger kneading. Keep walking, just like that, then running. Use the sword like you're dancing with it. Keep the rhythm.

Step and slash and turn the knife

We call this one Poke the Wife

Until the sweat starts and it's hard to count, hard to keep the rhythm for the gasping in your ears and hers and the blood hammering at ancient anvils and whup! Genes sift and sort their new friends. Unzip and loctite, unravel and velcro back together. Old and new.

No, small things are not innocent.

Whatever those legionnaires had, they should have bottled it, not a faery left that glade with her desires unsatisfied and without a tiny bud of life unfurling in her belly. As for the legion, their horrified centurions marched them south and spent the rest of their careers trying to expunge the stain.

Ma-nes, Pen-a-tes and Lares

We've been having it away with faeries

Hur hur hur.

#

Collunda spends the night. And the next day. And the next night. She learns a little Latin, laughs a lot and finds out about love and loving. He tells her his name is Futator Picti.

"That's a nice name."

No, it's not - it means Pixie-Shagger. Later on he admits his name is Alfonso and the other name was just a joke. Collunda sees no reason to return to Side, where Tristram probably doesn't love her and everyone else thinks she is stupid. The only thing she misses is her House. Collunda is going to Rome to see the monuments and the thousand-year-old indestructible centre of the empire and to be loved; loved completely, whole-heartedly and for ever after. She ignores every piece of good advice given to her by faeries and centurions alike and sits on the galley stroking her pregnant belly when they all embark for Rome at Icius Portus. The legion doesn't go to Rome, of course. They are quietly split up and sent away. To distant regions or back home. To Brindisi. Where the relatives slaughter some goats and cook up a swift wedding feast for Alfonso and his British bride.

On top of the kitchen cupboard in my mother's house there was a dusty biscuit tin. The tartan-patterned lid said 'Un Regalo da Brindisi' and there was a picture of a seafront. Collunda said she would give it to me when I was older because the contents told the story of my birth: a red plume from a Roman helmet; a funny-looking gold spoon with an eagle on top; a coin with a curly-headed emperor; some recipes on crumbling parchment, written in Latin and signed Futator Picti. A tiny painted scene on an oval of polished bone showing a blue sky rising like a breath from a turquoise sea hushing up to gold sand. The man and woman are formally dressed, he in the polished brass and leather of Roman battle-dress and she in cream drapery. Hush and you will hear them talking.

"Ah, Collunda! Mea columba. Meum delicias. Sine candida puella meis. Filioli carmen avis. Tenuitas mea tristia mea speciosa cassita–"

Oops, sorry, try it now:

"Ah, Collunda, my dove, my darling. My own gorgeous girl. My little song bird. My naughty nightingale, my lovely lark. I never imagined seeing you standing here on my beach, in my town. And as soon as this criminal of an artist is finished, I'm taking you back home and you know what will happen there, don't you?"

He waggles his eyebrows, she blushes and giggles.

"It's so lovely to lie down and rest after all our travelling. I'm glad we decided to come to Brindisi, after all. You are so very beautiful."

"So are you."

And he is. A bit short for modern tastes, but tanned and muscular, with white teeth and dark hair and warm brown eyes you can fall into forever. Not only that, but he has sold out of the legion and is back working on the family's olive farm (which he will inherit one day) so he is well-to-do. They often spend their evenings feasting and drinking. He calls her his Fairy Bride. Everyone around the table laughs and nudges each other, so excited to see a young man so much in love that he will say the silliest, most romantic things. They raise their glasses and shout his name. The younger men of the village, eavesdropping whenever they can, repeat his ornate compliments to their own girls, who sigh and swoon in response. He is a hero. He is loved. He is holding Collunda's hand and her belly is swelling with their first child.

He doesn't object to the name,

"Viridia? Odd, but I like it." He doesn't object to her insistence on suckling the child herself; he only objects when she tells him she is leaving.

"The child should meet her other family, in Scotland."

"You're not from Scotland. You don't need to go away. Your kind can visit any time they like."

It is a whispered conversation. They both know the young men listen at the window and, however much he likes to call her his faery girl, the local administration is unlikely to approve of actual magical happenings.

"It's not just that. You have to tell everyone I've gone to Scotland – I'll be away some time."

"How long?"

"It's relative." She can't explain. This is a man who grew up in a culture without zero – it hasn't been invented yet. No-one falls in love with maths teachers here. Explaining Einstein to a man for whom the sun circles the earth and crops live or die at the behest of dryads is only possible in the most superficial sense.

She tells him the story of the man who goes to Faery and stays one night.

"In the morning he stretched, picked up his stick and walked out. In his village he couldn't find one man or woman he recognised. He asked after his own people and were told they had moved away after their son tragically disappeared. But that was years ago, the people said. He told the people his name and they beat him out of town, calling him a liar. It had been fifty years. The two worlds move differently. No-one will visit me – I've only been gone an afternoon, perhaps less."

He is silent. Sulky.

"How long will you stay there?"

"An hour or two."

He doesn't believe her. She doesn't believe it herself. She has been with him almost two years and she has seen his body change in that time. She is scared. She loves him enough to want to remember him hale and well, young and smiling. He is not smiling now.

"I don't want you to go. I'm afraid of what might happen. People will say I should have travelled with you – they'll blame me when you don't come back." He likes being the town's big romantic hero. No-one ever mentions the Ninth Legion and they pretend not to notice the gold eagle spoon he has had made for his daughter. His daughter who will grow up speaking Latin unless Collunda does something.

"Leave it one more year? Just one?"

"I'll come back, don't worry."

She does come back. When Brindisi has electricity and hamburgers. After Tristram has told her about the stars in her eyes. After Cricket is born. After years of teaching her half-mortal daughter every trick she can to disguise her lack of magic. In a cellar near the beach, she finds the little trove Alfonso buried and takes it away with her. The family business is still going strong and she buys a jar of olives. The picture on the label shows a Roman soldier kissing a white-clad girl under an olive tree. Collunda sighs. She got what she wanted. She remembers him young and smiling. Faeries 2, Romans not doing so well: zero if they only knew what it meant.

#

The Land of the Faer lies close. Only a hop, skip and a jump away. That's why they call it Side. It's right beside her. Right beside you too. A magic path, a hollow tree, just down these basement steps and through that nondescript door. It is a huge country with many entrances. As far as you care to travel through it, that much of itself will it weave before you.

Pause, wondering, in the first tree-shaded glade, under silver leaves, and that will be all that there is. Faerie for you will only be that simple glade, with its magical snowdrops or ominous mushrooms, whatever you have imagined. Gather up your courage and venture forwards down a narrow path, or push through the thick shrubs hanging with berries and you will find more, and more, and yet more. After some months of traveling and the land unrolling before you and unraveling behind you so that you can never go back, only differently forwards, the one quality of the Land of the Faer that you will always remember will be the squabbling. It's all those hormones we talked about before. Faeries who hate faeries. Faeries who hate humans. Faeries who are jealous, envious, self-righteous, grasping, petty, proud, greedy, rude, hyper-sensitive, humourless and, in many cases, just plain dull.

Faeries love to pretend to be good but it must be said that this isn't their natural state. Goodness requires a certain amount of moral discipline, self-awareness and a determination to Do The Right Thing. Being bad is simply a matter of shrugging and turning aside. Not speaking out to say that a thing is unfair, unjust, not very nice or could be better. Evil is easy. Bad is breezy. Badness requires less thought, much less hard work, and rarely asks you to do something you don't want to do. Bad faeries are lazy, stinky, cross, quarrelsome and not very bright. Exactly like the good ones. And since both will lie to you about what they want, it can be really hard to tell the difference.

There is, famously, a Rift in Faerie. The great divide between the delicate wee-folk who would never dream of growing taller than your knees, if that, and will starve themselves to stay small. And those others, those size-whores, who hunted all through the early empires and ... perhaps this is the time for a brief reading from The Secret History.

Well…reading... it's a faery book so you actually have to eat the petals. The pink ones. They taste rather nice.

Then you have to hope you don't die.

Oh, did you eat them already?

Never mind, most people survive, and I expect you can feel it now, can you? The story that tells itself in your bones and pumps through your blood. That recognises you, even if you haven't heard it before.

Shh. This is secret. This is the beginning.

You, in your long hair with those scraps of precious leather keeping your willy safe from the stinging nettles, peeping into a moonlit glade. She is there, on a mossy bank, sleeping under the no-weight of wings fine as cobwebs. That's the finest thing you know. You don't know silk yet. The pinnacle of your technology is what you hold in your hand – the pointy rock strapped, with rough nubby leather, to the shaped wooden handle. You have never in your life seen a creature like this. You know fourteen women by sight and are directly related to nine of them. This isn't a woman. Women aren't pale and delicate and achingly beautiful.

You look up at the Man in the Moon. There's a fierce wind blowing up there. Clouds flicker over his face and he winks at you. You should not do this. You should not reach out your free hand because you want to touch something soft and fine in a life with few comforts. And you definitely should not step forward into the moon-glow. Because, when you do, it is like stepping into a lake; the moon-lit grass sparkles like water. It should be cold and slightly gritty underfoot. Instead, you sink thigh-deep into warmth. Soft ooze trickles between your toes so that you cannot stop wriggling them.

The faery's eyes are closed; you can imagine how sweet her breath would be against your cheek. The warmth honeys up around your hips. Your mouth is open. The precious axe drops to the ground.

Glamour.

Everything slows down. Breath is like nectar. You can feel the light fizzle against your skin. She breathes. You think you hear a voice.

"Am I sleeping, do you think? And if I am, what will you wake when you wake me? Am I a sleeping dog that you should have let lie? Am I a bottle you are uncorking with your kiss? Am I really sleeping, do you think, or did I see you coming and quickly lie down?"

You don't know what to do or say. You're only four feet tall, but she is shorter. The stillness in the air thins enough to let you wade forward. You still have your hand out. It almost touches her. Almost reaches that skin as white as snow, those lips as red as cherries, that hair as black as a raven's wing. As black as charcoal. As black as shadows. You bend down and gently, reverently, more softly than you have ever done anything in your life, kiss those blood-red lips.

Her eyes are large in her face. Grey like clouds reflected in water. She seems curious. Watches you. Noises. She scowls. Tiny figures sliding down moonbeams, shushing and giggling. You hear bells and more figures, warriors with thrumming wings, stand, hover, between the sliders and the ground. Your sleeping faery leaps to her fett to shout at them,

"No! Go back!"

But the sliders don't stop. They probably can't. They are falling out of the sky and gravity is on their side. The warriors burst through and spray into the night air with a shiver of bells. Hacking at the warriors as they pass, the sliders land in the glade. Swords flash and tiny sweet mouths curse and shriek. There are wounds. Great sword gashes across chests and stomachs. Missing arms, thighs laid open to the bone. They don't seem to notice. The creatures stand, if they can, watching you. There is a hunger in their eyes that you don't understand. You have no idea that there are faeries who want to be big. And, you haven't yet worked out selective breeding. You aren't trying to make fatter pigs or tastier cows, so you're not putting two and two together.

"He's mine!" warns the first one. The one you kissed to wakefulness.

"As long as you share," says one of the others. The first faery twitches away your rough loincloth and the warmth whooshes up into your brain. The night is very long and is all stars and pleasure.

#

"Oh, hullo Collunda."

With a hop, skip and a jump she is back in the familiar forest, a very long way from Brindisi and bumping into Tristram on that old familiar path. It is only the next day in Tara but Collunda has a baby strapped to her back. Tristram is the same blond faery prince she remembers from two years ago. Still looking at her with that agonised expression on his face. Collunda bites her lip. She knows what that expression means now. It is a beautiful day. One of those days when there is a sparkle on the edge of every leaf, the air is the colour of melted cheese, the sky wants you to get naked and dive into it and a single bird somewhere is calling and calling on a rising note, Hel-lo? Hear me? Want some?

Tristram takes a step forward. It is Collunda. Here again. Why is she looking so sad? Has she been waiting for him? Does she still like him? Where has she been? Whose baby is that?

"Oh, Tristram. The violets are lovely. I've put them in water."

They are surrounded by violets. Bathed in the scent of them. Shameless plants with their endless "Come and get me, I want it now" messages.

Gagging for it.

Tristram steps closer and Collunda, ripe from her experiences with Mr Picti, puts her hand up to touch his face. In the ensuing mayhem, baby Viridia is left bawling at the foot of a tree and numerous violets experience much rougher pollination than they were counting on.

Which is typical behaviour for my mother: selfishly pursuing her own pleasure and leaving me to look after myself. Again. Decent faeries leave their children under gooseberry bushes to be raised with all the other faery children by Fruit Faeries. That way, faery children form nursery attachments, learn all the basic spells together, fight their way to survival against the elements, against predators, against other faeries and learn to kill. Proper faery children grow up together. I had none of that, just my mother's undivided attention and her worried frown every time she flew and I walked or I demanded she make me toast and jam instead of conjuring it for myself. In the right atmosphere, magic will out. Smothered by love and care, my magic curled up in its basket and closed the lid.