Not so awfully long ago, as the stars who created time tell it, the Fair People left the Old World — called the Middle Kingdom — and crossing the great ocean, came to dwell in the mountains and forests of America’s New World. The first to set foot on that land was Ruddy Alf, a copper-haired Norwegian sea dwarf. Though that is only according to the heroic saga he himself liked to sing. Alf’s boast was that he alone had set sail from Scandinavia, leaving a single footprint from his reindeer-hide boots on the sandy shore at the very edge of the flat earth where demons were said to dwell. Next — or simultaneously, or according to another account, years and years before — a leprechaun from Ireland named Brandan came ashore. A mischievous sprite who, when caught, will reveal the hiding place of treasure. He loaded his sealskin canoe with illicit whiskey and set out for the New World… 18 …world and made his way to the New World. However, most of the Fair People considered Alf and Brandan’s exploits mere legend, and believed the true discovery of the New World was the work of the Italian fairy Colon Savanelli — a bold sailor from Genoa. He had been commissioned by the Queen of the Iberian Hadas (present-day Spain) to find the fabled Spice Islands. For the Queen wished to send her subjects and the Fair People of the Old World to the newly discovered land, away from the Old World that had been prophesied to meet its end. And at last, the end came. The age of Man had begun. The Fair People’s outstanding artistry, their radiant beauty, their power and glory — all faded away like fireflies disappearing at sunrise.