Samhain and the Space between the Worlds - Holly Race

When I was ten (a very, very long time ago), my parents took me for a ride on Midsummer's Eve. My pony, an ageing but sprightly, speckled creature called Cobweb, was my best friend and one of my favourite pastimes was making up adventures for us to go on.

On this Midsummer's Eve, my parents told me that the fairies had heard of how wonderful Cobweb was, and left a present for us. I just had to canter up this hill and keep a close eye on the ground. Far from the main road, canopied by oaks and birches, Barrington Hill was a magical place for me anyway, but never more so than at that moment. That evening, as Cobweb and I cantered up the path, I dutifully kept my eyes peeled for signs of fairies.

Was that gold dust on the ground, or just the sunlight playing through the leaves?

What's that up ahead, on the side of the path? A tree trunk... but what's on it?

I slowed Cobweb to a halt and stared at the trunk. On it, amidst flurries of gold dust, was a tiny, golden horseshoe. A fairy horseshoe.

I can see now that it's plastic, but at the time it felt like fairy gold!

The horseshoe lives in a book of memories about Cobweb, but the item itself isn't what's important. I still vividly remember the heat of the evening sun on my back, and the way it sent its shimmer through the trees so that I felt as though I was riding through haze. It was a Midsummer feeling - that feeling that true magic is not far away, if only we could lift the veil between the worlds.

In a few days time, Samhain will be upon us. Pronounced Sauw-en, it's an old Pagan festival marking the start of Winter, and traditionally it is one of the times when the barriers between our world and the 'otherworld' are at their thinnest. Over the centuries Samhain has been amalgamated into All Hallow's Eve, and then into Halloween. Our calendars are peppered with the ancient ruins of pagan festivities. Some, like Samhain, have been commercialised. Some have been picked apart and used to create new celebrations, like Ostara - now Easter. Some remain only as a feeling - a change of mood as the nights close in or grow longer - like Beltane, which marks the beginning of Summer.

In my book, Midnight's Twins, the knights' calendars are still governed by these old dates. Samhain has particular meaning for me now because it is the day when new knights - and my main characters - are called to the otherworld, Annwn. Samhain is the start of my story, and Beltane marks the end of the book.

But really, we all tell stories at these times of year, don't we, in our different ways? Maybe we go out looking for pumpkins, or read ghost stories under the covers. In Iceland, 'jolabokaflod' is the simply excellent tradition of gifting books on Christmas Eve, then reading them through the night. One of Shakespeare's most loved plays is set at Midsummer, when the fairies come to the woods outside Athens to wreak havoc with mortals.

Maybe we're still trying to make sense of the changing of the seasons, in the same way that the Greeks told the myth of Demeter, Persephone and Hades to explain the oncoming of Winter and the dying of the crops. We may on an intellectual level understand that the rotation of the earth relative to the sun is what causes the seasons. On a primal level, though, we still fall back on old stories and superstitions as the smell in the air changes and our moods shift.

Cobweb inspired so many of my stories, both as a child and an adult.

Or perhaps we truly are sensing the fragility of the fabric between the worlds, and the stories at these times of year are summoning ghosts from beyond the veil. For me, I'll keep chasing those fairy horses.