I PAUSE HERE IN my records of Project Pharos (which is proceeding to my complete satisfaction, though I have not yet received replies to one-tenth of the invitations I have sent to prominent members of the astronomical community to witness the greatest event of this, or, dare I say? any other age: the establishment of communications with a race from another world) to comment upon a lesser matter, of a personal nature, which is causing me not inconsiderable distraction. I refer, of course, to the increasingly irrational behaviour of my daughter Emily. Since her return from Dublin she has floated around Craigdarragh as if in a daydream, paying only the scantest attention to her father and his epochal work, her head filled rather with fantastic notions about faeries and mythological creatures haunting Bridestone Wood. I can not comprehend, much less tolerate, my daughter's absolute insistence upon the objective truth of these fantastical notions. And as if this were not enough, she has now intimated to me that she wishes to borrow one of my portable cameras with which I am charting the progress of the Altairii vessel to take a series of photographs of these "faery folk" at play in the woods around the demesne. Is she doing this out of spite for me and my rational, scientific philosophy of life in a pique of adolescent rebellion? We had the most fearful row, Emily insisting that she was not a little girl any longer, that she was a woman and that I treat her accordingly; I arguing with gentle persuasiveness and calm rationality that to be treated like a woman, she cannot revel in childish hysteria. Alas, nothing was resolved, and I fear that, as in every other decision regarding our daughter, Caroline will refuse to support me and side with Emily.

But that I had more time to spend with Emily! Maybe then she would not have wandered heedless into these realms of fantasy and whimsy! I fear I have not of late been a proper father to her, but the advent of the star folk of necessity turns all our human relationships on their heads.

Finally, the electrical fluctuations that bedevilled the house at Easter have resumed and are more frequent and of longer duration. I shall have to have words with Mr. Michael Barry of the Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh, and South Donegal Electrical Supply Company, and with his dour employee, Mr. MacAteer. The disruptions to my work at this advanced stage of the experiment are bad enough. What is intolerable is that the electrical supply for the pontoon lanterns should be unreliable, and fail at the most inopportune moments!

Finally, and I mean quite finally, as in the proverbial dromedary's straw, for several weeks the tenant farmers have been complaining of attacks on their poultry runs-as if I were somehow responsible for their domestic security. Well, what do I discover this morning but that the same damn vermin has broken into the Craigdarragh pens, and in an act of sheer, wanton destruction, ripped the heads off five birds. As if my burden were not heavy enough. Alas, I have not the time for a detailed investigation of the distractions; the demands of the Altairii are paramount.

Emily's Diary: July 3, 1913

YESTERDAY WAS THE HOTTEST day yet; it was so unbearable in the gardens that we were forced inside, where it was at least tolerable. Only Daddy seemed unaffected by the heat, bustling around on his funny businesses like it was a cool April morning and not the hottest day of the century (so the Irish Times said), while Mummy and I flopped around expiring on sofas, begging Mrs. O'C to bring us another jug of iced lemonade.

It was too hot to sleep last night. After what seemed like hours of tossing and turning and trying to force myself to go to sleep (which only makes you all the more awake), I gave up the struggle and got up. There was still light in the sky. Whether it was the light of the sun just set or about to rise I do not know: all the clocks in my room had stopped at different times. There was a bright moon, just past full. I don't know what made me open the window; perhaps I hoped for a cool and refreshing breeze off the mountains, but if anything, the air outside was heavier and more stifling than in my bedroom. Everything was purple and lilac and silver, and still; so still. It seemed like a midsummer night's dream come true.

Then it was as if a silent voice had called my name: Emily. I had to go out there, into the night. I had to. I remember noticing that the Westminster chimes on the landing had stopped at ten to two. As I tiptoed downstairs and out the french windows in the dining room, I heard the voiceless voice call again: Emily. Outside, the air seemed to embrace me. The perfume of flowers was overpowering-gardenias, night-scented stock, honeysuckle, jasmine. Everything was as still and silent as if time itself had stopped, not the Craigdarragh clocks. I crossed the sunken garden and the tennis court. Where clematis, sweet pea, and hollyhock screened off the summerhouse, I stopped. I could feel the compulsion inside me, but I resisted. It was a foolish thing to do, for the more I resisted, the stronger and stronger it grew, until it overwhelmed me. I untied my shoulder bows and stepped out of my nightgown. As I did, it seemed to me that the entire garden had been holding its breath and now released it in a gentle sigh. I did not feel ashamed, or afraid-not then. I felt free, I felt elemental, I felt as if I was not naked at all but wrapped in a cloak of sky.

The voiceless voice called me toward the gazebo, grey and silver and shadow in the moonlight. Under the eaves glowworm lights flocked and buzzed. But these were not glowworms, for glowworm lights are cold green and these were blue and silver and gold. It seems strange now (many things seem strange now about that night, though they seemed as natural as air then), but I was not afraid. The voiceless voice called me forward again, and as I drew closer, the lights swarmed away from the summerhouse eaves and hung in a moving, dancing cloud before me. I gingerly stretched out a hand-not in fear for myself, but rather that I might frighten them away. One detached itself from the flock and settled onto my palm. It allowed me to lift it up in front of my face, and I saw that it was not an insect at all but a tiny, tiny winged girl, no larger than a fly, glowing all over with silvery-blue light. Then she leapt from my hand and the cloud of lights moved away from me, between the screens of hollyhocks, toward the rhododendron garden and the woods beyond. I followed on; I had no doubt that I was being led.

The faery lights led me over the stile across the demesne wall and into Bridestone Wood. And there the magic, so long anticipated, so deeply desired, was waiting for me. Bridestone Wood was alive as I have never known it before-every twig, every leaf, every blade of grass breathed the old magic of stone and sea and sky. My heart hammered in my breast and my breath faltered, so strong was the call to come away, come away. The lights led me onward, inward. The woods were thick with floating thistledown which brushed softly past my body. The perfume of green growing things was as overpoweringly heady as the flowers in the Craigdarragh gardens. The grass beneath my bare feet sparkled with dew but I did not feel cold-I did not feel anything except the need to penetrate deeper, closer. And the deeper I went into the wood, the faery lights increased in number. There were glowing sparkles in bush and tree and leaf, and more than lights. Half glimpsed in the shadows and the faery flicker, then gone again, I thought I could distinguish faces and forms, half human, half plant-faces like open flowers, like leaves, like patches of silver lichen and wrinkled bark. Onward I went, and inward. I cannot now recall the specific moment when I became aware of their presence; their manifestation must have been gradual-a slow stirring together out of air and moonlight and shadow. At first I thought they were night birds or bats-they were close, but not so close as for me to be able to make them out clearly. Then they were all around me, clinging to the harebells and the brambles and the ivy and the branches of the trees, springing into the air as I pushed past: the faeries.

They were of a size that would stand comfortably in the palm of my hand. All were naked and as innocent as babes in Eden. Of course faeries, like angels, know neither shame nor conscience, though I was surprised to see that they were not all female, as I had always thought. They had both females and males. The males were wild, eldritch little creatures, with pointed ears and teeth; dark slits of eyes, like cats; and a great fierce mane of dark hair. Their wings were like those of bats, as opposed to the sheer gossamer ones of the females. For their small size, they seemed to have disproportionately large genitalia. Also the females, though altogether more delicate and diaphanous, each possessed large pairs of breasts that hung almost to the waist.

In my spellbound state, I did not realise how far I had come-to a place on the side of Ben Bulben where a rock face had, at some distant time in the past, broken and littered the slopes with large, sharp-edged boulders. In the dell at the foot of the cliff, among the moss-covered rocks, the guiding cloud of faery lights dispersed to roost on the branches of the trees, as if a constellation of stars had fallen from heaven and caught there. I looked around, not certain what to expect; then, from afar, I heard the silver notes of a harp. And suddenly, I could see them. All of them, everywhere. Suddenly every flower was a face, every stone a pair of eyes. I saw the leprechaun on his cobbler's stool amid the cool moss of the dell. I saw the pookahs-creatures the length of my forearm with the body of a boy and the head of a horse-capering agilely through the trees. Among the roots squatted things like tiny fauns, with the legs and horns of a ram and bright, human eyes. In the distance I saw the figures of the woman archer and the blind harper, whose music filled Bridestone Wood, floating like the drifting thistledown through the trees. And beyond them, almost hidden by the moon shadows, were the Lords of the Ever-Living Ones: the antlered helmets of the Wild Hunt, the moon-silvered spearpoints of the Host of Sidhe. The music swelled until the woods rang and I felt my heart would burst. And then there was silence-profound, absolute silence, and stillness. And far off, among the trees, there was a golden glow. It drew nearer, and as it approached, the host of the faeries let out a bubbling murmur of awe. Heads bowed, knees bent, spear points touched the moss. The golden glow entered the clearing and I saw that it was a wheel. It was five-spoked, much as I have always imagined a chariot wheel to be, rolling by its own power. It rolled toward me, enveloping me in its golden glow. I felt an overwhelming need to kneel before it. Inside the light I saw that the wheel was not just one thing, but many things at once: a golden salmon, a spear of light, a swan with a silver chain around its neck, a radiantly beautiful man with the green branch of a tree in his hand. The words of wonder and awe seized in my throat. I reached out a hand to touch the magic and mystery. The golden light blazed up before me... and the next thing I remember, I was back again beside the summerhouse where I had dropped my nightgown, alone and naked and cold. My feet were like two blocks of ice in the heavy dew. It is strange, but I remember feeling guilty and embarrassed as I pulled on my nightgown. The sky was beginning to lighten to the east; dawn would soon be rising over Glencar. I shivered and shuddered in the cold before the rooming.

I do remember one more thing. As I slipped back through the french windows up to my room again, all the clocks I passed stood at quarter to four.

Emily's Diary: July 712, 1913

THE GOOD WEATHER BROKE last night in a tremendous thunderstorm. It started unassumingly enough-just rambles and grumbles out beyond Knocknarea-then the sky gradually filled with black and before we knew it, lit up with lightning. The thunder rattled the windows and the storm was upon us. I have never seen the like before, trapped and roaring in the glens and valleys around Ben Bulben. Mrs. O'C was sure the world was going to end, and every time the thunder roared, I found myself agreeing with her.

It definitely spelled the end of the marvellous weather. When I looked out my window this morning the mountain was covered in grey cloud and a dismal, dreary rain was falling. I was stuck in the house all day doing jigsaws in the library and playing with the cat. How easily entertained are cats! A little scrap of wool and they are amused for hours. Lucky cats. I am bored, tired from doing nothing, and depressed. When the weather broke, it felt like the magic broke with it. Was it all just a Midsummer Night's Dream?

July 8

STILL RAINING. LOOKS LIKE it will never end. How much rain can there be in a cloud? I had always imagined that as they rained, clouds dwindled until eventually they rained themselves away to nothing. Evidently not.

I've been thinking-about the faeries; about the magical Otherworld so close to our own, and yet so far away; about what Mummy said about the Old Gods not really dying, only changing into the shapes of their enemies. All sorts of thoughts whirled around in my head like a kaleidoscope, wanting to fall together into a pattern that would make sense-a theory, a hypothesis (Daddy would be pleased. Here I am, thinking like a scientist)-but they wouldn't. It is as if there is one magical, golden key that holds them all together and I cannot find it.

One positive thing out of today: after all my badgering and beavering (like the drop of water that wears away the mighty stone, as Daddy keeps reminding me), and, I don't doubt, a little help from Mummy (I'm sure I heard voices raised in the breakfast room when I got up this morning), Daddy has relented and let me have the use of one of his cameras-a leather-bound brown folding portable.

July 9

ON APPEARANCES ONLY, TODAY is no better than yesterday, but I could feel a change in the air, in that same way you know by feel when it is going to clear up and when it is going to rain all day. By three o'clock there were patches of blue coming in from the Atlantic, and, miracle of miracles, the odd stray beam of watery sunlight. These were still far from perfect conditions, but I had no intention of losing another moment to the weather. Armed with camera and notebook, I went up into Bridestone Wood to hunt faeries. Nothing. They must be even more sensitive to the elements than we are. It was not a totally fruitless day. At teatime I noticed, as if for the first time, the carved Dutch wooden globes Daddy keeps on the dining room mantelpiece. They are hollow wooden balls painted with old maps of the world which open like Russian dolls so that the smaller globes nestle within the larger. Noticing them made something go click! in my head and all those thoughts and ideas that had been flying around loose in there began to fall together.

July 10

NO FAERIES TODAY, EITHER. But I could feel them as I have never felt them before at Craigdarragh-that spooky, electrical sense of presence.

I am developing a theory about the faery: it is that our world and Otherworld lie one inside the other, like the concentric spheres of the carved Dutch globes, along different planes of being. In many ways they are alike, though I think that to us, Otherworld seems a little smaller than our world. Perhaps to Otherworld it is our world that seems the smaller. Both follow the same path around the Sun, and (here lies the significant difference) both turn, but at very different rates. In our world a day is twenty-four hours long; in Otherworld, a day can be a year from dawn to sunset. Daddy would be pleased with my next piece of reasoning: I consulted the atlas in the library and thought it all out very scientifically. Because the periods of rotation are different, there may be times when our world's axis is inclined at a different angle from that of Otherworld, with the result that the surface of Otherworld touches, then passes through, the surface of our world. This area of intersection starts as a point, increases to a circle. Then, as the orbits progress and the axial tilts come back into line again, the zone of interpenetration diminishes again to a point. This, I think, is why Otherworld has always been associated with things of the earth-with hollow hills and the underworld. Mummy's book makes the point that the legendary entrances to Otherworld have always been through caves and lakes. It would also explain why supernatural events are associated with the equinoxes and solstices-because it is at those dates that the shift of the axes occurs! I think that the geography of Otherworld must be very different from our World. I think there is much less sea, much more land-the Otherworldly Tir Nan Og is always placed in the far west, where we have only the empty Atlantic.

The more I think about my theory, the more it opens up before me, just like one of the magic gates to Otherworld, the moon-shadowed path that leads to the Land of Ever-Youth. I am so excited, it is as if after a long, hard climb, I have come to a high vista from which I can look out over a whole new landscape.

July 11

THE WEATHER IS BETTER, brighter; there is a strong breeze off the Atlantic carrying fast white clouds upon it. I went up to the wood with a sense of expectation and was not disappointed. I saw a pookah-one of the little horse-headed men. It took me quite by surprise-all of a sudden, it just appeared out of the brambles. By the time I had recovered from the surprise and unfolded the camera, it had vanished. But at least I know that they are around. Better luck tomorrow.

I am thinking today about the faeries-how in the old days there were many manifestations of the same person; how they could be a salmon and a rowan and an eagle and a great golden cauldron all at the same time. This leads me to wonder if maybe these latter-day faeries-the pookahs and the leprechauns and the Trooping Faeries-are also forms of the same mythological characters. But they seem to me much less highly sophisticated than the early, elemental personas, almost as if they have degenerated rather than developed. This seems strange to me, so I have been doing a little more reading. The Teaching Sisters would be horrified if they knew I had been reading Charles Darwin; yet it was to his Origin of Species (strangely enough, one of Mummy's contributions to the library, rather than Daddy's) I went for help. What I read there only confirmed my suspicions. Creatures do not devolve into less sophisticated forms, but evolve into more developed, generalised ones. Which leads me, dear diary, to my most startling conclusion yet. These smaller, more specialised species of faery are the early, primitive, less evolved forms; the ancient, elemental shape-shifters who were many bodies with one person, they are the later, more highly evolved manifestations. Which can only lead to one conclusion: Time in Otherworld runs in the opposite direction to the way it does in our world.

July 12

SUCCESS TODAY! IN THE morning, I came up quietly on a group of Trooping Faeries at their toilet, washing themselves in the late dew still lying in the bells of foxgloves, and managed to take a couple of photographs. I cannot say if they will come out-I am no photographer-but I hope so much they will. It is so important that I have evidence. I received the impression that the faeries knew I was there and allowed me to photograph them. But, if time runs the other way in Otherworld, then what I did will already have happened to them; to them, the time I start to take photographs is the time I suddenly stop.

The whole of Bridestone Wood feels strange today, as if it were not the place I have grown up beside to know and love, but a part of the ancient wildwoods of Otherworld somehow imposed onto our world. The trees seem very tall, the air full of the sounds of birds-raucous calls, flapping wings.

After luncheon I glimpsed the faery archer. This time there was no misunderstanding; she knew I was there and waited, smiling, for a full minute while I fumbled with the camera before she went leaping off through the undergrowth. Toward teatime, I stumbled across the trail of the Wild Hunt itself and followed them for the better part of half an hour. Alas, all I will doubtless have to show for my efforts will be a few blurred images of antlers silhouetted against the sky.

I am thinking about what I said yesterday about time running the other way in Otherworld. It seems to me that this might be an explanation for the mechanics of magic, though it makes my head spin, thinking too long about it. For example, we wish for something in our present (which is the same as the faeries' present, this point where our worlds pass each other). The answer comes in our future, which is their past, because the faeries, in their future, which is our past, cause things to change about and set events in motion so that at the proper time-in our future, their past-that wish will come true. This is why magic is just what it is-magic; why there is no apparent link between cause and effect, because, in our direction of time, there isn't, but to the faeries, everything is done in accordance with their arrow of time, and their laws of cause and effect. In their past, they see the effect, the wish comes true, and so in their future, they must arrange things so the past comes true. But I have the feeling that the faeries are not as strictly bound by the laws of past and present as we are; that is why, in our world, they can be both future and past forms, because they can be whatever they have remembered they were, and whatever they hoped to become.

See? I said it made my head spin if I thought too long and hard about it.

July 22, 1913

Rathkennedy Breffni County Sligo My Dearest Hanny, A thousand and one apologies. It is much much too long since I last wrote to you, much less saw you. The fault, I fear, is entirely mine, and I cannot even plead having been up to the proverbials in work. Alas, I am purely and simply the world's worst at writing letters.

Anyway, customary salutations to you, your health, your wealth, your happiness etc., and without further ado, I shall get down to the real meat of this epistle.

My dear Hannibal, you really must drop whatever you are doing at once and come up to Sligo. There is something happening here that is so extraordinary and exciting that- I am getting ahead of myself. Much less confusing if I were to spell things out in the natural order in which they occurred. Freddie says I am always doing that, rushing off everywhere and nowhere at once.

As you may know, the other Constance, my cousin on the Gore-Booth side of the family, had invited William Butler Yeats up to Lissadell for a few weeks. Well, of course, what with us being Brethren in Arms of the Gaelic Literary League and Green Flag Nationalists, I couldn't let the occasion go unmarked. So I had Beddowes and the boys from the estate buff up the brass work and slap a lick of paint on old Grania (you remember? The venerable family steam launch) and throw a little boating-party cum picnic cum poetry reading. Among the literati I'd invited was Caroline Desmond (yes, those Desmonds, though she has nothing to do with that contraption bobbing up and down in Sligo Bay) and her daughter Emily, already at her tender years an ardent admirer of Willie's poetry and philosophy. Yes, contrary to what you may have read in the newspapers, there is some sanity and good taste in the household, needless to say, all firmly attached to the distaff. Well, the day went capitally. The weather was perfect, old Grania chugged along without bursting a boiler, no one decided to bless the lough with seasickness, Beddowes didn't have to fish any of the old spinsters of the League out of the drink with a fishhook, Willie was his usual Olympian self, the wine was actually cool this time, no one was ill from overeating and heatstroke at the picnic on Innisfree, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary here, you are thinking. Patience, my dear Hanny. Patience. It wasn't until Grania was within sight of the Rathkennedy landing stage that the maroon went up. Willie had, inevitably, gathered a small group of sycophants around him and was regaling them with some learned gobbledygook about Celtic mysticism and the New Age when out of absolutely nowhere, Hanny, this Desmond girl, little Emily, produced a set of photographs which she claimed show legendary creatures inhabiting the woods around her home. Well, of course, with the ensuing uproar, I had to see what the excitement was about. Poor Willie was almost apoplectic, and, well, I hesitate to use stronger words, bless me! if she wasn't telling the truth. Ten photographs, and notes on where, when, and how taken, down even to the prevailing weather conditions! Some, I will admit, left a lot to the imagination-patches of shadow that could as easily have been the branches of trees as the antlers and spear points of the Wild Hunt of Sidhe which they were claimed to be. But others were less equivocal-two of a brazen hussy dressed only in leather straps, carrying a bow the size of herself, with a smile somewhere between the Giaconda's and a Montgomery Street madam's. More convincing yet, one showed a congregation of six little woodland nymphs washing themselves, for the love of heaven, Hanny! in the petals of a foxglove. And, most irrefutable of all, the final two in the sequence-the first, of a little naked mannequin with the head of a horse, and one of herself smiling at a tiny, winged woman sitting in the palm of her hand, combing her long hair with minuscule fingers.

My dear Hanny, what can I say! I have seen the evidence myself and I am convinced of its veracity. Had it been presented by an accomplished photographer, I might have hesitations, but these are the handiwork of a fifteen-year-old girl!

Well, of course, Willie has been in a fine old flap ever since, and wants to arrange a series of interviews, preferably under hypnosis, with Emily to finally prove the existence of a mystical world apart from, but adjacent to, our own. Even before I heard the word hypnosis mentioned, I had thought of you, Hanny; after all, you are the country's leading investigator of the strange and supernatural. Willie hasn't the first idea about mesmerism, let alone how to go about an investigation scientifically, so I suggested you to him with a few of your credentials and he insisted that you be in attendance. I know you'll hardly need asking twice, but please hold your horses one moment before throwing things into cases, telephoning the station, etc., and I'll summarise the arrangements.

Caroline Desmond has suggested the weekend of the twenty-seventh of this month as a provisional date. Telegram me, will you, and let me know if it is acceptable. She's offered to accommodate you, but I said there was more room at Rathkennedy, and anyway, we were old friends. Hanny, dearest, there's too much we have to talk about! Do say you can make it-I'm dying to see you again. It must be over three years since our paths last crossed.

Erin Go Bragh!

Connie

Excerpts from the Craigdarragh Interviews: July 27, 28, 29, 1913, as Transcribed by Mr. Peter Driscoll, Ll.B., of Sligo.

(The first interview: 9:30 P.M., July 27. In attendance: Mr. W. B. Yeats, Mr. H. Rooke, Mrs. C. Desmond, Miss E. Desmond, Mrs. C. Booth-Kennedy, Mr. P. Driscoll. Weather, windy, with some rain.) Yeats: You are quite certain that Emily is in the hypnotic trance and receptive to my questioning, Mr. Rooke?

Rooke: Quite sure, Mr. Yeats.

Yeats: Very well, then. Emily, can you hear me?

Emily: Yes, sir.

Yeats: Tell me, Emily, have those photographs you have shown me been falsified in any way?

Emily: No, sir.

Yeats: The recorder will note that scientific research has proved that it is impossible for a subject to lie under hypnosis. So these are genuine pictures of faery folk, then?

(No reply.) Rooke: You must question the subject directly, Mr. Yeats.

Yeats: Forgive me, a momentary lapse of memory. I repeat, Emily, are these photographs actual representations of supernatural beings? Faeries?

Emily: Faeries? Of course they are faeries-the Old Folk, the Ever-Living Ones.

Yeats: The recorder will let it show that the subject, on being questioned a second time on the veracity of the photographs, again verified their genuiness. Therefore, having established the validity of the photographs, could you tell me, Emily, on how many occasions these photographs were taken?

Emily: Three occasions. Once in the morning. Twice in the early afternoon. Three days. Then- Yeats: Go on, Emily.

Emily: It was as if they didn't want me to take any more photographs of them. They were distant and aloof, like there was a cloud over the sun. They drew apart from me, hid themselves in the wood. I haven't seen them now in many days, Oh, why do they hide themselves from me? I only want to be their friend.

Yeats: Thank you, Emily. That will be all, for now.

Rooke: Excuse me, Mr. Yeats, one moment. Might I ask a couple of questions before we close? Emily, on what date did the first manifestation occur?

Emily: The first night was the sixth of July. I remember-I wrote it in my diary. It was the last night of the very hot weather. I'd been home from Cross and Passion about ten days. I heard them call my name, and when I went out to look, the garden was full of lights. They led me into the wood. I'd never imagined there were so many of them, or that they were so beautiful.