ty, ty of t t afternoon  to itself; perfect transparency must be impenetrable, tical bars of a brass-coloured distillation of ligerstices in a sky  bulge  struck tine-stained fingers, ttered. A cold day of late October,  acorn cups underfoot in t slime of dead bracken ing cold of ter t grips  tigark elders  mucumn o make you smile but it is not yet, not quite yet, t time of ting sense of t cessation of being; turning, turns in on itself. Introspective her, a sickroom hush.

    tep betrees and ted to its original privacy. Once you are inside it, you must stay til it lets you out again for to guide you t safety; grass grerack years ago and nos and tle labyrintrees stir affeta skirts of  round . tumbling croig in tted s, notle stream  margins of mars it ime of t, blackiser to ice. All ill, all lapse.

    A young girl o trustingly as Red Riding o  t admits no ambiguities and, rapped in ly as it seems.

    tem of Co anotimate perspectives of terloper, traveller oed distance t perpetually receded before me. It is easy to lose yourself in these woods.

    tes of till air, as if my girliso a sound. ttle tangled mist in ts, mimicking tufts of old mans beard t flossed trees and bused fruit  treats. One by one, to trees ts cradle of ripped branc I felt I  al tle around me, I t t nobody  me.

    Erl-King will do you grievous harm.

    Piercingly, noe as if it came from t of t bird left alive. t call, ,  directly to my .

    I il its perspectives converged upon a darkening clearing; as soon as I sa once t all its occupants ing for me from t I first stepped into tience of ime in the world.

    It ive a sent leattle brooget . A lean, tall, reddiss great cy fox, its muzzle so a point, laid its runk of a scarlet roo c delicately stretco peer at  of uncanny  of snoed softly, so t he knew I had arrived.

    he smiles. he lays down his pipe, his elder bird-call. he lays upon me his irrevocable hand.

    e green, as if from too muc the wood.

    t you.

    t of ticks and stones and  of yelloream in a tin pail.

    does ? y of tetles; savoury messes of cmeg;  ed fungi are fit to eat; ands tc in ligs, t you cook like tripe, erelle s fan-vaulting and faint scent of apricots, all spring up overnigained by nature, existing in a void. And I could believe t it he woods.

    in to gatural treasures, ely as s  ;bum-pipesquot; or quot;piss-t; and flavours tra  toucs on t Michaelmas.

    , t milk and  c ic taste. Sometimes raps a rabbit in a snare of string and makes a soup or ste tures in it. old me about ttle ones disappear dos until t is over and out to run around as usual. old me oad ream in summer er; t me. o ts from reeds and o baskets and into ttle cages in which he keeps his singing birds.

    cs, rapped birds.  is, to keep   me ed teettle gleaming on them.

    ic s  neatly on trees since Judas ells me, tempting my o dry, too -- tic and te, a s, acrid smoke, a brig I  you cannot get a tune out of ts strings are broken.

    No  its s on times, tly, yet more enticingly, in ttles doo tling straender butc, hes.