So Fiona passed through the grove and came out on a broad place of grass, and right before her stood the fairy ring. But not such a one as the ring on Glenollisdal which she knew. This ring was of vast size, and round it grew in a circle huge red toadstools splotched with white, the red toadstools from which the witches of Lapland had used to brew philtres of love and death. But vast as it was, it could not hold all the creatures that swarmed round it. It was a gathering such as Fiona had never dreamt of. On the outskirts stood an innumerable host of little strange beings, of every sort and shape, elves and brownies, gnomes and pixies, trolls and kobolds, goblins and leprechauns; and the babel of them as they whispered together was like the noise of a flock of fieldfares. And within them and around the ring itself stood the fairies. All the lost peoples and nations and languages, it seemed, were there in miniature; everyone that Fiona had ever heard her father speak of, and many another of which even he knew nothing. There were fairies of the Old Stone peoples, brave-eyed, clad in pelts of the saber-tooth, bearing the blade-bones of bisons on which were carved pictures of the mammoth and the reindeer. Fairies from Egypt, clad in fine white linen with girdles of topaz and aquamarine, with fillets round their brows from which the golden uraeus lifted its snake's head, bearing blossoms of the blue lotus. Fairies from Babylon, glowing in coats of scarlet or of many colors, their eyes deep with immemorial learning, bearing clay tablets on which were signs like the footprints of birds. Fairies from Crete, light of foot in the dance, in flounced skirts adorned with golden butterflies, crowned with yellow crocuses and bearing vases on which were painted the creatures of the sea, nautilus and flying fish and polyp. Fairies of the Iberians, black-haired and black-eyed, clad in black cloaks, small and shy and dusty, bearing ingots of tin. Fairies from Cappadocia, in peaked shoes, and pelisses of lion's skin trimmed with the fur of hares, moving to the clash of cymbals, bearing grapes and ears of corn. Fairies from Mexico, with heavy cheek bones, resplendent in mantles woven of the plumage of the quetzal bird, carrying bricks of gold. Fairies from Ethiopia, black as the black diamond, clad in leopard skins and plumed with the feathers of ostriches, carrying tusks of ivory. Fairies from the land of Sheba, well skilled in riddles, in cloaks of camel's hair buckled with clasps of onyx, bearing caskets of agate filled with spices. Buddhist fairies of the Naga race, with the sevenfold cobra's hood springing from their shoulders and shadowing them, languorous and heavy-eyed, carrying crimson water lilies. Fairies from Cambodia, in stiff dresses of cloth of gold, with gilded faces and scarlet eyebrows, bearing pagoda bells which tinkled. Fairies of the Golden Horde, bandy-legged, with pug noses and slits of eyes, clad in dyed sheepskins and carrying the