Druid and Crow

  Here’s to witches and creatures, plain people and ghosts.   A sip to unwanted company, a gulp to unexpected friends.   Here’s to home in a stranger’s house, to the joy of life through mourning lips.   Bottoms up to the magic of love, whichever world it comes from. PROLOGUE      Once upon a time, in the heart of an ancient forest filled with wildlife of all kinds, beyond the paths and sounds of people, behind the magical mists that led into the unknown depths of the thick vegetation, there stood a single house. A large, two-story building cramped between the trees, bent and curved in impossible ways to fit their embrace, as if it had grown brick by brick along with the giants around it since they were just sprouts. A house with brilliant blue roof tiles that sparkled even under the dark night sky, stained glass windows in wonderfully carved cases, walls almost completely covered by poison ivy and a tall chimney that curled around branches, with a dragon’s angry head formed out of the