The glad Flower Faeries of Spring bear the Holy Pair, abandoning themselves to childhood play, farther upstream, toward mysterious stands of Willow. The Faeries mark their progress by inserting wands of Willow in the moist soil to grow new river-binding trees. Also, wandering off from either side of the sinuous river, the Fays implant Willow wands in the earth’s wounds of rampant erosion. In these places, healing Willow will re-knit the rich integuments of Wildness. From moist niches of Vernal lushness, the Divine Children gather fat, luminous mushrooms.
When the procession enters the swaying Willlow Groves of Persephone, like early grasses the languorous trailing boles fill out with yellow-green leafage. The faeries weave great baskets of Ossiers so they may gently rock the slumbering Children, and thus fashion their formative dreams to the Love Tempo of the Queendom of the Trees.
As May/Maia Day Approaches, the Fays form a great circle on the sward, and begin the Beltane Evocation of Flowers and Butterflies. They dance about little Dione and Dion, the Divine Children, stationed at the Center. Each Fay links with his or her fellows to left and right by gripping between them an upright leafy Willow bough. The dancers move slowly at first, deosil - in the direction of Moon and Sun.
They pad supplely about the Circle of the Moon, moving their boughs up and down. Their breathing is maintained in unison while humming the Arcane Seasonal Vowel Name of the Great Goddess. In trance, their movements become those of the wind-whispering Willow boughs that trail their verdant fingers in the mellifluous eddies of “The Round River.”
Hypnotically, Dione and Dion brush each other all over with Willow fronds. Dione wields a female branch, Dion a bright yellow male one. A full May Moon rises through the lithe, sweeping ranks of bodies and branches. Beads of dew glisten in soft, nocturnal rim lights. As the children somnolently brush each other, their bodies grow and change. The girl’s hips fill out, the boy’s shoulders broaden. In unfolding corollas of warm, luminous mist, the heavenly breasts sprout, and the stem of the phallus matures. Throughout the trembling woods, buds loosen their whorls in the ardent darkness. When the sun rises, they burst into bloom, the tender stamens and pistils taut and quivering.
The Sun clears the Plateau of Beltane, and stands proudly separate in the red sky. Then Dione and Dion shake their heads as if to awaken from a dream. They drop their Lunar brushes and step back from each other in amazed adoration. In the sudden petioled blaze of Maia, their dew-gilded bodies flash distinct firmaments of male and female. The enchanters break the Ring of Faerie between worlds, and converge upon the Shining Goddess and God. The Nymphs pull Dione away, and the Panisci drag Dion in the opposite direction.
Their nakedness rustling with new leaves and studded with flowers, Nymphs parade a May Ring streaming with long colored ribbons; the Satyrs bear a long May Poe. The ring and the pole are carried separately to a grassy enclosure not far from the river. Within a Hedge Maze of Faerie Thorn are two rounded knolls. On the North Tumulus, the Satyrs raise the pole; on the one in the South, the Nymphs place the ring on a square stone at the center. They ray out thirteen ribbons, each with the color of a sacred month, all around the base of the hill. Then Dione and the Nymphs run off squealing through the maze, and out into the West. Dion and the chiding Fauns follow them, but strike out into the Eastern hills.