Not long after that, Eileen, who had looked after me through the worst of this, and I were talking on the phone. I asked her just who had visited me while I was ill, and she said, "Why, Elaine, of course."

"Right," I agreed. "And who else?"

Eileen's voice sounded a bit puzzled. "No one. What are you talking about?"

I hesitated to explain, even to Eileen who knows me well. How could I say, "Well, wasn't there was an old woman about four feet tall who brought me fizzy medicine filled with light in a gold cup set in a carved wooden holder?" Or, "There was a small fellow, maybe three feet tall, wearing a cloak of silvery-brown birds' feathers." Or should I mention the big man with the antlers who came and sat on the side of my bed for several dawns in a row to watch the night turn to sunrise? Or...

I just sort of mumbled that I thought there had been other folk. "Maybe," I said, "they were just hallucinations." I didn't believe that—hallucinations aren't usually so physically present - they don't make the mattress dip when they sit on the side of the bed, and the medicine they give doesn't boil through one's veins in a whoosh of light and power. Eileen didn't seem to believe they were hallucinations either. About that time I started having dreams. The interesting thing was that the dreams told a story. There were even dreams within the dreams, also part of the story. I began writing them down but the writing of Taisgeal is taking a long time. After several years, I'm still working on it. When I finish it, you can decide for yourself whether I was true dreaming/remembering or merely hallucinating and dreaming remarkably consistent dreams. I'll put the first chapter up here as soon as it is reasonably fit to read.

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