The Cake
The Cake was the most awaited thing in the village of Wootton Major. It was supposed to be cooked once in 24 years, and this occasion was a special one. And now, when the time for the Feast finally came, the children invited to the feast looked forward to seeing the Cake. When they saw it, the Cake “stood in the middle of the long table, inside a ring of twenty-four red candles”. The nuber of 24 was symbolic for this feast, as it occurred once in 24 years, and only 24 children were invited to it. The Cake’s “top rose into a small white mountain, up the sides of which grew little trees glittering as if with frost; on its summit stood a tiny white figure on one foot like a snow-maiden dancing, and in her hand was a minute wand of ice sparkling with light”. The children were fascinated by the view, and looked at the Ckae “with wide eyes”, and one of the kids shouted: "It is pretty and fairylike!" The image of the Cake adds magical atmosphere to the story, and to the feast in particular.
Images of Faery
Faery is a made up magical country, which only a person who possesses faystar, may visit. Smith is the one. “Some of his briefer visits he spent looking only at one tree or one flower”, but with his interest growing, he continued going there, and each time went far and far. In longer journeys he had seen things of “both beauty and terror that he could not clearly remember nor report to his friends, though he knew that they dwelt deep in his heart”.
But there were things he did not forget, and “they remained in his mind as wonders and mysteries that he often recalled”. One of such memories was an occasion when he “came at last to a desolate shore and saw a great ship cast high upon the land, and the eleven mariners passed over him and went away into the echoing hills”.
Another time he “found himself in a wide plain, far off there was a great hill of shadow, and out of that shadow, which was its root, he saw the King's Tree springing up, tower upon tower, into the sky, and its light was like the sun at noon; and it bore at once leaves and flowers and fruits uncounted, and not one was the same as any other that grew on the Tree.” He never saw that Tree again, though he often sought for it.
On one such journey climbing into the Outer Mountains he came to “a deep dale among them, and at its bottom lay a lake, calm and unruffled though a breeze stirred the woods that surrounded it”. In that dale “the light was like a red sunset, but the light came up from the lake”. Then from nowhere a wild Wind rose to him, and “it swept him up and hung him on the shore, and it drove him up the slopes whirling and falling like a dead leaf”.
Together, the images of Faery show that it can be both beautiful and dangerous.
The Queen
During one of his visits, Smith was lucky to see the Queen herself. “She wore no crown and had no throne”, but stood there “in her majesty and her glory”, and all about her “was a great host shimmering and glittering like the stars above”.
The last visit
Smith never thought that his visits to Faery would stop, and now when this moment came, he felt both sad and cheerless. But the “dawn was in the sky and the stars were pale”, and that meant that his last night in Faery came to its end. “Far off he heard the echo of a trumpet in the mountains. The high field where he stood was silent and empty”. And he knew that his way now led back to bereavement.
