Summary

Tam Lin reminisces about the fairy queen he once spent several years living with. He knows that fairies don’t have physical shapes in the way the humans do, and instead project images made out of dreams. Sometimes the faerie queen would appear as a woman, and other times as a tree. The castle in which they lived also seemed to change shape, as did the food he was fed. Tam Lin and the queen would ride alongside her fairy knights, who were composites of animals. The woman fairies were proudly themselves, wearing butterflies sewn onto their skin. The motley group also included a cat that had been turned into a human boy.

Tam Lin reflects that although he was generally unhappy there, he misses it and longs to go back. At home, he sleeps beside his human wife and thinks about the faerie...