A shy girl stands alone, observing all this, not ready to step into it. No one else appears to be there. Only the birds – a great murmuration of swallows appears, for it is early morning. Moving like music over the village, over the hillside, and then right overhead, in vortex, creating elaborate calligraphy, in the sky.

The shy girl, Glynis, counts the letters of her name and hopes to see them written in the sky by the swallows but can’t make sense of the arabesque forms. So she takes a stick and prints her name on the ground in the dirt of the deer path to the forest. GLYNIS. Just as she finished the last line of a perfect S, she hears her name being called. This happens every morning: her mother calling, time to go home for breakfast.

Each morning that summer she placed her name along the deer path, humming softly to herself as she inscribed the letters into the earth. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the markings on the path grew closer and closer to the edge of the forest. In the same way as a dog sneaks closer and closer to a forbidden place but can’t be seen moving.

When she was near the forest it was hard for her to hear her mother calling for breakfast. It wasn’t just the humming, or the distance. The sounds of the leaves and the creaking of the trees, the birdsong and squirrel chatter combined to almost play a melody. And when night fell, Glynis was still humming but now she was well into the forest – so far in fact that the deer path had ended and she stood in a small clearing circled by trees that surely were the oldest in the woods.

For years her parents searched for her, never giving up. Dogs come to the woods, search parties with flashlights worked night and day. Years later when developers razed the forest for a new subdivision, there was no trace of Glynis, for she had been absorbed into the forest network, like a mermaid under the sea. But what happened then is not my main story.

One day, a beautiful young woman stepped confidently out of a wild forest. Dressed in homespun Wovenwar of delicate dyes and fine handiwork. Clear-eyed, she observed a small city at the foot of the forest hill. Without turning back, she walked gracefully along the bicycle path. The day was bright and warm. She was humming a little tune. The knapsack on her back held clothes, a book, and a store of gems and jewels. For Glynis was a forest soothsayer and she had told Wise Stories to travellers for years now.

Entranced by her beauty, travellers and hikers in the forest came upon her at a waterfall, or a clearing, by a pond, at the top of a hill, near a meadow, Beside a stream. They heard her humming and came toward her. She never ever approached them first. She sat down with them and it was always the same. They tried to make small talk, to discover where she came from, but this was all deflected very quickly.

What happened was somewhat miraculous. Sun shone only on them – she made some hand gestures to the sun and the breeze is stopped – the birds stopped, everything stopped just for an instant. In that instant she caught their breath in her heart. They were literally entranced. She showed them who they were, wrote their name in the earth with a stick and tied a wool thread to a nearby tree before slipping back into the woods. When they opened their eyes, they were amazed that only an instant had passed – for they had experienced years of life married to Glynis or being her friend or her mother or daughter or son.

She popped up in different places in the world, stepping out of the wild for a time – but when she did she was subject to the laws of time. Preferring to remain in wild forests was actually a necessity, for sooner or later she felt the evidence of time, and its inexorable impact. Part of that was love.