The beautiful Faerie woman stepped forward and introduced herself as the May Queen, the second guardian of the Trod, and warned us that we must meet her challenges if we wished to pass. In a voice of clear crystal she told us that we must acknowledge the three truths of Love that she would tell us and, only after doing so could we pass on our way.

The first truth that we had to face was that 'Love make the proud humble'; to demonstrate this one of us must come forward and kiss her feet. After a moment's hesitation Luke stepped forward, dropped to his knees, and performed this act of submission at the feet of the May Queen.

The May Queen then told us that we must recognise that 'Love makes the strong weak' and that therefore the strongest of us must hand over his weapon. That clearly referred to Sergeant Jones and the curious weapon he had acquired from the Mi–Go. In the altered paradigm of the Dreaming it now appeared to be a magical wand, carved with strange glyphs and runes – different in appearance but perhaps not in purpose. I was surprised that Jones gave up his prize so willingly but, as he had demonstrated before, he was always prepared to make sacrifices for the good of the mission and his companions.

The enigmatic creature then informed us of the third truth that we had to acknowledge, that 'Love make wise men fools'. In fact to pass this test all our Fey questioner required was for the 'wisest' of us to step forward and tell her a joke. Unexpected though this challenge was we were a match for it and Gabriel stepped forward telling her what she took to be a joke (although I was none too sure).

The devious Faerie then told us that, in order to pass, one of us would have to gift her a kiss. Without hesitation the hard-boiled gumshoe, Hammer, stepped forward to grant the May Queen's last request. Unfortunately, as he leaned towards her the detective stepped from the safety of that straight ribbon of silver that ran beneath our feet. In an instant the guardian seized the hapless agent and both he and she disappeared into the dark shadows beneath the arch.

That one of our number could be snatched away so swiftly and that we could do so little about it was terrifying. Despite this we screwed our courage up to the sticking point and decided that we had no choice, if any of us wished to escape this spectral dreamland we would have to follow this strange and terrible path through to its end.

Despite the danger of inadvertently leaving the path we made a collective but unspoken decision to pick up the pace. All of us now desired to reach the end of this terrifying journey regardless of whether that end was for good or ill.

NEXT...