The skirt of Cocot's red over-dress snagged on a mossy patch on the tree, as though bony fingers held it, keeping her from rejoining the path. Cocot yanked it free.

Distant thunder rumbled. Cocot's scalp and nape prickled at the approaching electricity, but she did not stop or go back. The sounds of gaiety, music and dancing swelled the further she walked. She reached the last corner; cliff face to her right and a steep drop to her left. After this bend, she would see the spruce in front of the crevasse, the fallen tree bridge, and the hanging vines where she had imagined a cloaked figure the day before and where she had fed carrots to Hector for the first time.

Around the bend. This was the bend her mother had spoken of; understanding flashed through her mind like a match striking. She must not go any closer. Pressing her hot cheek to the rock, she closed her eyes and listened. What time was it? Perhaps eight or eight thirty in the evening. She could only linger ten or fifteen minutes—no longer, especially with the heavy clouds threatening overhead.

A new thread of music began—it was a song for those who have enough music to not worry if a song is not particularly joyful, or mournful, or bright, or dark or anything in particular at all. There was a violin, or two that were played together, and another instrument with plucked chords, but neither guitar nor piano. Something in between that Cocot had never heard. The melody was simple and slow and flowed from around the bend, rolled over the path and alongside the cliff, skipping upwards occasionally, then trickling down again.

It set her yearning, but not too much. It called her feet to step in a dance, but not too high or too fast. It beckoned, but only slightly. She answered, and turned the bend, head bowed low under her hood. The path was empty except for the swaying vines and tall trees.

From under the hood, her gaze fell on the fallen trunk that made a foot bridge towards the farm. It was no longer the simple tree that had collapsed over the stream that she remembered; its bark flaking away in patches, fungus sprouting in half circles from the decaying wood. It was a healthy, living tree that had grown sideways, bent at a right angle at ground level and decked with ribbons, decorated with spiraling silver wire-work and bronze half disks.

She crept closer, careful to hold her head bowed and her face hidden. Lightning flashed in the distance, glinting off the fine metal works and decorations on the bridge. She was halfway there. Thunder boomed, rattling her teeth and she flinched. Stepping in to the vines for the security of the cliff rock, she wondered how foolish she was to be out during an electric storm.

That was when she noticed the door. Behind the mess of vines that whipped about in the wind, there was a wooden door leading into the hill. She had passed that way dozens of times in the last couple of years, but never had there been a great wooden door. She would have seen it.

She pushed away the crackling vines and roots hanging down to study it.

The wood appeared to be larch—a heavy, hard wood that blackens with age. The door was entirely black except for the copper hinges and part of the handle, which were green from exposure. The knob on the handle was chiseled glass that contained flecks of silver inside, scattered through the ball like stars if the night sky was folded backwards on itself.

The door's surface was carved with symmetrical patterns and there were lines of symbols that could have been some sort of writing. Cocot traced the main design in the middle; the wood as smooth as the ivory keys on a piano that she had touched once.

The memory of the metallic click—a key in a lock—from the day before came to her and she inspected the copper handle. The keyhole was somewhat oblong with a slightly larger top, the same as the doors at the chalet. There was something else on the handle: an ivy leaf with a curling vine stretching under the keyhole.

She recognized the leaf from one of her mother's keys; it was the same. She took the key ring from her pocket, cupping her fingers around the keys to keep them from making too much noise. Holding them up, she plucked the one she wanted and inserted it gingerly in the hole.

Her stomach pinched with apprehension and her breath was high in her shoulders. What kind of fool tries to open a fairy door into a hill—into the fairy realm without being invited?

Cocot put her ear to the door and could hear the music plainly, feel the vibrations of dancing feet and was overwhelmed by the need to have more. She tightened her fingers to turn the key, left hand on the door. It did not feel right to open a door without saying a charm.

A charm....Would the fairies have set a charm as her mother had? What would happen if she tried and failed; said the wrong words, used a key that was not right and turned the knob on a fairy door that was still locked? Would an alarm sound? They would come for her.

Lightning streaked across the clouds brightening the grey-green half shadows of evening. The thunder began rumbling through the valley almost immediately.

She would try to lose them in the storm, she thought. No matter that the chalet was the closest house nearby besides the farm. She would pretend to be a simple human girl who could not see them. The charm would be the same that her mother had taught her and the key went to this lock without a doubt.

"Open, for I mean no harm here. By my voice, by my heart, know me and let me pass," she whispered. The key moved in the lock as easy as a knife in warm butter, making the tiniest snick. She brushed the knob with her fingertips, thinking her sweaty hands would slip on the glass, but the handle seemed to have a will of its own, and turned. The door swung open, exposing a dark hallway into the rock.

Under the hill.

Were there guards? Had someone heard the clicking key in the lock or the whine the hinges made over the music that streamed from the corridor?

Only darkness waited. No fairies rushed out, no devilish gnomes shouted or angry elves accosted her. Cocot stepped inside and pulled the door closed. Closed, but not locked. The darkness was nearly complete and she faltered. Bit by bit her eyes adjusted and she could make out the contours of the walls by the pale golden light coming from the other end. The passage was curved; she could not divine the source of light.

"Get out of here," she told herself. "Leave before they find you."

Her feet were not obeying, however.

Applause and cheers echoed through the tunnel, bouncing off the stone, warping and repeating as it travelled. Rippling notes from a string instrument, a harp, reached her ears and the other sounds faded. A mournful flute joined the song, each note sighing into the next.

Her feet inched forward on the icy floor. Only when her mother had died had such an ache filled her heart; the music ripped her loneliness from its hiding place and laid it out in front of her. The days that started with a greeting to her oven, passed by singing lullabies and rhymes to the walls and garden flowers, long evenings that weighed heavy on her shoulders—bending them—and nights plagued by unnamed creaks and snaps that the chalet made. No one to laugh or sing with. No games to speed the empty hours by, no answers to her questions or comforting arms to banish her fears. The haunting flute tore it from her and thrust it before her eyes, forcing her to look and when she turned away, her heart was still aching, begging to go home. To be at home forever.

But the chalet is my home, not this place, she told herself. Even so, she continued to tiptoe through the long hallway, closer and closer to the bright firelight at the end.

So slowly and softly did she creep, that she herself did not notice the exact moment she left the passage and stepped into the great hall. Such wondrous sights were here; her eyes barely knew what to gaze upon. Dancers in fine dresses or billowing shirts and fitted pants created flowing waves across the floor, gold firelight flickered on the moist walls of a natural cave and sparkled on quartz and mica crystals, a source of water bubbled up from the ground and flowed into a winding, underground stream. Above her, tapestries hung from beams every few feet, depicting scenes of every aspect of life: the hunt, the feast, a ferocious battle where demonic-faced fairies road black horses, two lovers knelt together, a widow stood over the body of her husband, the break of day over the mountains, the moon among the stars, the forest, spring, summer, autumn and bitter winter.

There was too much to take in all at once. She walked further into the hall, spinning in circles and open mouthed with amazement as she went. Murals were painted on the walls above the tapestries; many reminded her of the pictures her mother had drawn in the cookbook. How strange it felt to see something familiar—a raspberry bush, a fairy girl crying, snails crawling—from her cookbook in the fairy hall under the hill.

The flute fluttered and fell silent, the last string played on the harp hummed on, false and solitary in the silent cavern.

Cocot sucked in her breath and tore her eyes from the paintings and tapestries. She had been invisible to people around her for so long that she had forgotten how it felt to be seen.

*** The picture doesn't exaclty fit the scene, but that is the feeling of the underground hall - a strange mix of nature and arches, towering columns and a stream running through the middle. ***