It was quiet in the country at this time of year, thought Marjorie Wallace, so much different from the hectic pace in Los Angeles. It was the first time in five years that she’d taken a vacation from her job as a women’s fashion buyer at the newly combined Robinson’s Macy’s, and she was bone tired. The fashion industry had taken so many flip flops over the past year that she was exhausted from making the rounds of all the designers, making sure that her stores had only the most current and trendy designs. An associate had recommended this quiet little town in northern California wine country. It was called Greenwoods, and it was so small that it wasn’t even on the map. 

     The strange thing about it was that from the moment she had arrived, Marjorie had noticed that many of the buildings had a Celtic influence to them. The church, especially, was adorned with Celtic knots and Celtic crosses. Having visited a number of towns and villages throughout Wales, Ireland and England with Celtic origins during her travels on company business she had seen enough similar markings to recognize them straight off. However, since there was no indication in history that the Celts had ever been to North America, it was patently odd to see markings such as this on a church in 20^th Century California. 

     It even extended to the very cottage she was staying in, which resembled nothing more than the paintings she had seen of English country cottages in London. And on the front door of this very cottage was a carving of a green man, and quite a handsome specimen to boot. 

     She laughed to herself. The first time she’d ever been alone with such a handsome man, and he was made of wood! 

     She opened the door and looked at the carving again. “So, you are the Green Man..." she commented conversationally. “A pagan god of the vegetable world. But what are you doing on the door of a cottage in California, a place thousands of miles away from any Celtic influence?” She gazed at the carving for a moment longer, then sighed. “I sure wish you were real.” 

     Closing the door, she went off to her solitary bed.

     Marjorie was ugly when she was born, her mother had told her. There was just no two ways about it. She had been an unattractive child; going through what her mother had hoped was an ‘ugly duckling’ stage, from which she would emerge as a striking beauty when she left puberty. It hadn’t happened. In her teens, Marjorie was as unattractive as ever. Though she tried through those turbulent years to use make-up and later on, the beauty secrets of the haute couture models she met in the course of conducting her business, it was all to no avail. She remained unattractive, unloved, untouched. At twenty-eight, she had resigned herself to a life of spinsterhood (how positively Victorian!), because she refused to settle for any man, just for the sake of having a relationship. She would have true love with a man who would be the right man for her, or she would have nothing at all. 

     Later that night, as she lay alone, draped in the moonlight falling through the window of the cottage, Marjorie dreamed of a man who looked like the Green Man. He came to sit beside the bed and gaze at her adoringly. 

     “Come with me, Marjorie.” he whispered to her. ‘Come with me to the fields and be with me forever.” 

     “Nonsense!” Practical, even in her dreams, Marjorie. “You don’t exist. You’re only a myth and a legend.” 

     The Green Man smiled. “All myths and legends must have a basis in fact, Marjorie, my sweet. Once, people knew us and worshipped us. It was only after your folk stopped believing in us that we faded away. Believe in me, Marjorie, and come away with me to my world.” 

     He held out his hand to her, a hand covered with moss and leaves, and she took it. He lifted her from the bed and strode with her to the window. Through it, she beheld a vista that had not been seen in California since the world was new; a tropical jungle of plants and flowers, birds and animals that she’d never dreamed existed. It was almost like a Walt Disney movie, she thought to herself. The Green Man smiled again, almost as if he could read her thoughts. 

     “A whole new world, Marjorie.” he murmured. ‘Just for you.” 

     When the cottage caretaker came a week later, he found all of Marjorie’s things just as if she had stepped out the door for a walk. When she had not returned by the next morning, he called the County Sheriff’s department, and a massive search was mounted stretching all the way to the county line, much further than she could have gone on foot and apparently without any means of survival, but Marjorie was not found. Finally, the Sheriff called off the search. 

     The caretaker sat with him in the cottage, going over his recollections with the Sheriff. 

     “And when you came in, it didn’t seem like there had been a struggle or any foul play of any kind?” the Sheriff asked. 

     The caretaker shook his head. “Nothing inside had been touched. But there was one odd thing.” 

     “What was that?” the Sheriff inquired. 

     “The carving of the green man on the front door has been changed.”

     The Sheriff opened the front door to look. The green man was not alone any longer. With him, there was a goddess who looked for all the world like Marjorie Wallace".

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