Free Enchanted Forests by Katharine Kerr

upon
    Queen Mab's table in the forest on the last day of April in fifteen
    hundred and ninety-five—but if you say I am mad, I'll not de-
    bate. I think I am not, and yet to pass four centuries with the
    Good Folk and not age a day is surely a great wonder; were it
    proven me that 'twas all a dream, that would be no greater mar-
    vel. In truth, I wonder whether all I see about me, this world of
    a twentieth century, is not but a dream."

    "Mr. Tinker, you seem to be in remarkably good health for a
    man more than four hundred years old," the host said, with just
    a slight sardonic edge to his voice.

    "Aye," Tinker said. " 'Tis the magic of the wood, beyond
    question."

    Jenny sat and watched as Tinker and his two companions—
    presumably the village witches from that town where she'd aban-
    doned him—held their own against the host's growing sarcasm-

    The younger witch hardly said anything, but the older argued
    at length for the existence of powers beyond modem under-
    standing—not fairies, but spirits or powers that gave rise to tales
    of fairies, or if even that seemed too mystical, she was willing to
    consider them as energy fields created by the living things of the
    earth.

    OUT OF THE WOODS          55

    Was it so utterly impossible that someone could become
    caught in such an energy field?

    "And these fields," the host asked, "preserved our Mr. Tinker
    for some four centimes? Would this sort of thing be responsible
    for the legends of the Fountain of Youth, then?"

    "It very well might," the elder witch declared.

    Meanwhile, Tinker himself seemed to be growing ever more
    uncomfortable, caught in the middle of this debate, and when at
    last the host announced that time had run out, poor Tinker was
    visibly relieved.

    Jenny turned off the set and sat on the hotel bed, staring at the
    blank screen for several minutes.

    Maybe, she thought, he wasn't a loonie.

    After that she began to watch the news regularly- She saw the
    reports from the experts, proclaiming Tinker to be either genuine
    or the best fake ever—neither linguist nor historian nor physician
    could find anything to contradict his claimed origin.

    The real bombshell was when his clothes were carbon-dated
    and proclaimed authentic late-sixteenth-century.

    It was after that that reports of would-be explorers getting out
    of hand at me forest began. Curiosity seekers had gone poking
    about there ever since Tinker's first television appearance, but
    now entire mobs were sweeping through the woods, searching
    for "Queen Mab's table." The authorities were dismayed, to say
    the least.

    It was a relief to Jenny when the forest was closed to the pub-
    lic; she hated the thought of all those people trampling through
    the underbrush, scattering candy wrappers and beer cans on the
    moss.

    She watched the televised reports with a sort of dreadful fas-
    cination- Picketers were protesting the government's decision to
    restrict access. There was talk of secret conspiracies to keep the
    "fountain of youth" energy for the government elite.

    And there were a few reports coming in, not very reliable
    ones, of people disappearing into the forest and not coming back
    out—presumably, they'd found the fairies.

    She spent hours on end in her hotel, watching—she knew it
    was stupid, a waste of her remaining vacation time, that she
    should be out enjoying London—-but she couldn't tear herself
    away.

    She was staring unhappily at yet another interview when
    someone knocked on the door of her room.

    Startled, she opened the door.

    56 Lawrence Writ Evans

    There were three men standing there. One of them held a mi-
    crophone, another a video camera.

    The third, somewhat disguised by a woolen cap and sun-
    glasses, was William Tinker.

    "Ms. Gifford?" the man with the microphone asked.

    "Yes," she said, puzzled. "What's going on?"

    "We understand that it was you who first found Bill Tinker
    after he emerged from the enchanted forest," the man with