Sometimes he lays his head on my lap and lets me comb his lovely hair for him; his combings are leaves of every tree in the wood and dryly susurrate around my feet. His hair falls down over my knees. Silence like a dream in front of the spitting fire while he lies at my feet and I comb the dead leaves out of his languorous hair.
– Angela Carter, from “The Erl-King,” Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (Penguin, 1997)



















