Haven

Joey Green has to face the challenge of the dark woods twice, and doing so brings him into contact with two kinds of faerie. The first time is before the story opens but we get to see how the decisions he makes shapes him into a different person from who he once was–somebody he didn't want to be anymore.

He's helped by the human community of the Faerie Festivals, particularly the attending Green Men, who show him the path he could take and who stand by his side to help him on his journey.

The second entrance into the dark woods is harder for him because he can't see the possibility of hope on the other side.

The faerie here are real and want only one thing: his death.

A different version of this novella originally appeared in Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner (2011).

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"Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better."

—Alice Hoffman

"De Lint creates an entirely organic mythology that seems as real as the folklore from which it draws."

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Charles de Lint shows that, far from being escapism, contemporary fantasy can be the deep mythic literature of our time."

―The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction