little, big

He told me he would show me, at the right hour on the right day, and I became very excited and read up on fairy matters and elf lore. One book said there was a county in Ireland that had never been infiltrated by fairies, but that they were even now trickling in to it little by little.

That surprised me.

I went to the church at the right hour on the right day, and there he was, a burly man with a dark beard and curly hair, and a large fragment of what must have been a much larger mirror. He set the mirror on the stone floor and I remember the feet of the tourists as they came in and out of the church doorway.

The doorway that the mirror showed was different from the church doorway it faced. In the mirror I saw a small wooden door in a stone frame, rounded, with a pointed arch, I think--or did memory add that Gothic flourish? The doorway seemed older than Gothic. It would have been very small, maybe 6 or 7 inches high.

As I looked through the doorway in the mirror, I felt wonderfully happy, just as the man predicted I would.

Question one: What do you think I saw through the doorway in the mirror?
Question two: Who do you think the man was, with the curly hair and the dark beard?

I realized as I looked through the doorway that I could hear a song, not so much in the church around me, but inwardly. The next morning I got my violin out of the basement so I could learn the notes of the song, and remember it better, and was surprised how easy the violin was to tune, given how long it had sat.

(I neglect it; I've always had to work so hard to be any good.)



(But even the talented people work hard, so I'm in good company.)

As I taught myself to play the song, I saw that in the night a spider had composed a perfect web between the back porch railings, just over the place where the steps go down to the yard.

Answer one: A waterfall, some mossy boulders.
Answer two: I don't know, but I can guess.