Dream-milk

It happened, as these things often do, in the time of your grandmothers' grandmothers, not so far from here.

Elenydd was a goatherd's girl, keeping a herd of two dozen - neither too big for a child, nor too small for a family. She lived between the high lands and low skies, roving under clouds and atop cliffs. Goats are wilful beasts, and so was Elenydd: she didn't heed her mother's warning to stay away from the gwyrwood - there was better grazing there and you know as well as she did that better grazing means better milk.

Back then, the Dreamfolk rode out less frequently, so 'gwyrwood' meant less than it does now. They were still then dark and haunted, filled with thin places and folded land. The kind of place where a child, more curiosity than caution, might never leave. The kind of place that goats are drawn to, because that's what goats are like. Sheep have more sense, but goats were what Elenydd's family kept, so goats it is.

Inside the dark and shaded forest lay a bright-lit and rolling lowland. Elenydd knew better than to walk out into Dream but the goats, mad beasts that they are, were already gone. She followed them out into the sunshine, swashing through waist-high grass and flowers. The sun was hot and high, the flowers were over-bright and thickly-scented, and bees hummed heavily and lazily through the air. At the top of a hill sat a solitary tree, high and tall enough that its branches brushed the clouds. In its shade, a herd of goats were grazing on the flowers. Elenyyd ran to them and looked for the queen to lead them back to Reality (goats are not sheep and cannot be driven).

Beyond the tree was a roadway that wended through the low hills and on the roadway, far away in the distance, was a traveller riding a pony. Drawn to the presence of an interloper, the pony came to a trot, each step travelling the distance of an hour's ride.

Hastening to leave, Elenydd roused her goats. Here was where things went awry: mixed in with the herd were goats Elenydd had never seen before. Their hair was silver and their horns were gold; Dream-beasts if ever such a thing had been before. Elenydd should have taken her animals and left the Dream-things behind, but the pony and its rider were bearing down upon them. Elenydd knew her stories and knew one of the Dreamfolk when she saw them. The Dreamfolk are shaped by the Dreamers and they resent us for it.

Elenydd kept her face hidden beneath her headscarf, so that the Dreamfolk couldn't find her in the waking world, and led her goats, and the Dream-goats, back towards the gwyrwood. She did not have to lead very much: the pony was upon them,

The pony's rider had no face and his legs melted into the pony's sides. As it walk-galloped towards her, the animal opened its mouth wide, wider, its head splitting into a pair of fanged and gaping jaws. As the last of the goats crossed the threshold, Elenydd thrust her crook into the Dream-pony's mouth. The little steel bells touched the beast and it screamed a terrible sound that shook the sky.

Elenydd fled. Tumbling back into the world, she took her lead goat by the horns and rode her back to the safety of her clan, the rest of the herd following pell-mell behind her, followed all the while by the sound of screams.

Nobody who ventures into the gwyrwood emerges unchanged and neither Elenydd nor her goats were any exception.

The silver-haired Dream-goats disappeared one summer night, but not before siring or birthing a dozen silver-haired doe-kids. They were strange beasts, over-wise and canny - moreso than usual for a goat - and the milk they produced on their maturity was sweeter than any milk before or since. One cup of their milk cured of any ailment of the body. Anyone who drank a cup of wirth was seized by a fit of divine inspiration. The cheese and curds granted protection from evil from sunset to sunrise.

But luck comes in pairs: good and bad.

Elenydd herself returned older than she ought to be, aged from a girl to a young woman in the span of an hour. She was deafened by the Dream-pony's scream and, forever after, her dreams were filled with teeth and prophecy, and and her footsteps were dogged by the echo of a pony's hooves.

So cursed, Elenydd left her clan to wander the highlands with her silver-haired goats, appearing when lest expected and most needed, willing to exchange her goats' milk for a night of hospitality.