Lord of the Forest
Chapter One
The Forest Isle, Archipelago of Arcus,
the Summer Solstice
Marius, Lord of the Forest, Prince of the Green, moved through
the wood. It was nearly time. All was in readiness for the Midsummer
festival. He dreaded it more and more each year, putting
up with giddy nymphs and sylphs and dryads from the astral
and playing host to curious mortals carrying on like cretins for
three days and nights.
He passed the ancestral oak in the clearing that had been
chosen to serve as the Midsummer tree. All through the day, wood
nymphs had decorated its branches with garlands of honeysuckle,
silkworm's gauze, and summer berries. Come midnight, women
would dance naked around it, chanting the fertility descants and
raising the sexual consciousness of the revelers, for that's what
Midsummer was, after all-a three-day orgiastic celebration
meant to bring bounty to all the hemispheres of Arcus.
During the rituals, he would be expected to perform, to have
coitus with fay and humans alike, if any possessed the prowess
to catch him. He would be pursued-at their mercy-hunted
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