Faierieland?

"Alrighty then!" quipped the elf with a smile. "In you go!"

Fred stared at the tree, he stared at the elf, he stared at the torch- light coming ever nearer. "You must be mad!"

"Nope," said the elf and shoved Fred into the hollow! Fred was so startled that he failed to notice how large was the inside of that tree, how incredibly expansive, how immensely... OK, alright, Fred did notice it. "By the gods, what is this place?"

The elf smiled a broad yellow-toothed smile (Elves weren't known for brushing). This is Bombast, this is our home." He swept his arm about and within the dim recesses of Fred's mind he came to the conclusion that either the elf had hexed him or that the tree was a doorway into faierieland. "And no," said the elf as if reading Fred's mind, "This isn't any part of the Fey Woodland you Men are so worried about!"

Before Fred was a path that led round a blue-green lake. The sky, if that's what you could call it, was not bright... more like dusk, or dawn (take your pick). Suddenly the sound of the sorcerer's yells broke into Fred's ears. He turned and saw the tree before him, with the large hollow, and within the hollow he could see the shapes of the mages, as if he were looking at them from behind a western desert-silk. "Don't worry," said the elf. "They can't see us or hear us... watch!" And with that the elf stuck out his tongue and made rude comments about their mothers and swine.

"This is too weird," said Fred.

"Come on!" said the elf, as uppity as always. "We've got to meet the Queen Mother!"

As he skipped away, down the path which was bordered by yellow stones and ruby flowers, he spoke of his Land. How it had once stretched far and beyond its present bounds, how the Queen Mother had ruled when all the land was One, in an age of the world long ago, long before now and far into the past, when the Queen Mother nurtured All from the center of the world to the four Ocean's shores.

1. "How can this be?" said Fred. "Men have lived in these parts the better part of a thousand years and I have never heard this tale." The elf looked at him impishly, "Men are ignorant of things older than they."
2. Finally they come to a house framed with living willows and insulated by mats of reeds. "Here we are!" said the elf.

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