It was nearly midnight on Christmas Eve and Sherry was slumped in a chair in the sitting room of her small cottage, lit only by the embers of the dying fire. She was feeling totally out of sorts, facing a Christmas Day on her own once again, which wasn’t at all what she had planned.

Sherry was a secondary school teacher specialising in Natural History at a large comprehensive school in a rundown area of town. She had studied Biology at university, quickly discovering that she was particularly fascinated by ecology and the relationship of species to their environment. She had worked as a volunteer during her long summer vacations on nature conservation projects, and one of her most significant achievements when she started teaching was to persuade the head teacher to allow her to transform an area of old industrial wasteland behind the school into a wilderness, complete with a natural wild flower meadow and a small lake.

She was a conscientious and enthusiastic teacher, and was very popular with her pupils, many of whom lived in terraced houses without gardens. She built regular field study sessions in her wilderness into the syllabus, and had found that freed from the constraints of the classroom even the most hard bitten of teenage boys would become excited at studying wild life in its natural environment.

It was Sherry’s love of nature that had led her to buy a small cottage several miles from town rather than a modern house on one of the new estates springing up around the town to cater for the many commuters who made the daily train journey into London. The cottage was situated in open countryside in what had originally been part of Windsor Great Forest, and some of it was very old, perhaps as much seven or eight hundred years, although it was fitted out with all the mod cons essential to life in the twenty first century.

Unlike some of her more cynical colleagues, Sherry genuinely liked children and, aware that at thirty three years old her biological clock was ticking, had reached the stage when she would have ideally liked to have settled down with a suitable man and started a family of her own. She was definitely not a prude, and had a healthy enjoyment of sex — one of the fringe benefits of her summer vacation jobs had been the number of fit and attractive young men among her co-volunteers. A common and very pleasant conclusion to a day of hard work and an evening spent singing songs around a campfire, was a night of enthusiastic love in her tent with a willing male partner.

The years had passed without her finding the right man, and she had had a number of unsatisfactory relationships, including a torrid but brief affair with a fellow teacher, who was unfortunately, married and unwilling to leave his wife even though he claimed she was frigid. She had also discovered that one or two apparently nice men became abusive after a while, which had done little to give her much confidence in the male sex. However she hoped that a few romantic days alone with her latest lover might lead to something but he had dumped her a couple of weeks before the Christmas holidays, complaining that he wasn’t prepared to come a permanent second best to the demands of her school work — definitely not good husband material.

As she hadn’t wanted to be on her own for Christmas she had invited her closest female friend, and fellow teacher, to stay for a few days. However she had rung the morning of the day before Christmas Eve to say that she wouldn’t be able to come after all because her mother had slipped on the ice and broken her wrist, which meant she would have to do all the cooking for her family.

To make matters worse the heavy overnight snow had blocked the road into town, so she couldn’t even pick up the turkey she had ordered. It had also brought down the power lines and when she had looked for the candles she kept for such emergencies, the mice had eaten them. Sherry felt so miserable that couldn’t even be bothered to go out into the cold to get some more logs from the outside wood store, so she decided that she would just go to bed, pull the duvet over her head and sleep until the New Year. How she wished now that she had accepted her parent’s invitation and driven up north to them for the Christmas holiday — entertaining her young nieces and nephews would have been fun and infinitely preferable to this. It was most definitely not going to be a Merry Christmas.

It seemed that she had hardly put her head on the pillow when there was a loud banging on her front door. Half asleep she struggled to make sense of this intrusion on her sleep, unsure whether it was just a dream, so she put the pillow over her head and tried to go back to sleep. But the banging continued, even louder than before, so throwing a dressing gown over her pyjamas, Sherry descended the stairs and approached the front door with trepidation, more than a little alarmed knowing that the roads were blocked, and wondering who could be about on a night like this. However it might be someone in trouble, so hoping that she looked braver than she felt, she drew back the bolts and opened the door a crack to peer out into the night.

She was about to say, “Don’t you think it’s rather late to be banging on someone’s door? Is there any way I can help you?” when she stopped dead in amazement at the sight before her eyes. Standing at her door was the strangest looking man dressed entirely in furs, carrying a great bow in his hand with a full quiver of arrows on his back and a long curved horn hanging from his belt. Strangest of all was his face, the upper part of which appeared to be a stag’s head complete with antlers. Sherry rubbed her eyes, thinking that she must be dreaming, but when she opened them again the vision was still there. Utterly perplexed, she opened the door wider and what she saw made her even more convinced she was dreaming. The small spinney across the road from her cottage had been replaced by a great forest, the trunks of the trees glowing palely in the light of the full moon, and overhead the sky was studded with the light of millions of stars shining like diamonds against the blackness.

“Who, who are you?” Sherry managed to stutter, totally lost for words.

“I am Herne the Hunter,” replied the man in a deep voice, “and I have come at your call to bring you some Christmas cheer.”

“But I didn’t call anyone,” said Sherry in a small voice.

“You may not have spoken the words,” he said gravely, “but your heart cried out in your loneliness, and so I came.”

Having said these words, the man lifted his horn to his lips and gave three long blasts. As he finished, a multitude of woodland creatures came out of the trees to stand behind him, led by a white stag with antlers that glittered like silver. He blew again, and in a twinkling the creatures were transformed into an army of elves all dressed in red and green, and the stag became a handsome young man with hair so blonde it was almost white and eyes like pools of liquid chocolate.

Herne spoke once more, “Young lady, I wish you a very happy and memorable Christmas, and may good fortune bless you from henceforth.” With that he turned on his heel and strode into the forest and soon disappeared from sight.

The young man, who looked like a god to Sherry’s enchanted eyes, took her by the arm and led her back inside her cottage, which was now brightly illuminated by the merry light of a thousand candles. “Go back to bed now beautiful lady, and when you wake in the morning everything will be prepared for your delight,” he said, and pushed her gently in the direction of the stairs.

“But what do I call you?” Sherry asked, deeply puzzled by his words.

“I am Cernunnos,” he replied, “but no more questions, “off to bed with you, and sleep sweetly the rest of this night, for on the morrow we shall feast like kings.”

The morning was already well advanced when Sherry was wakened by the magical light of the sun reflecting off the snow flooding into her bedroom. She felt more rested than she had for a long time and at the same time curiously happy, the misery of the night before just a bad dream. Looking at her clock she thought, “Goodness it is nearly noon, time I got up and looked to see what I can find for my Christmas dinner. I may not have a turkey, but I’m sure I can find something special in the freezer which will have to be used up anyway since the power is off, and I’ve got plenty of bottles of wine.”

Then, as her senses cleared, she remembered, “What a strange dream I had. In a strange way I only wish it was true, but there is no such thing as magic. It did drive away my blues though, I really was feeling very sorry for myself, but now I feel so much better, and that is magic of a sort, isn’t it? Happy Christmas, world!”

She jumped out of bed and rushed over to the window. But when she opened the curtains she almost fell over backwards in shock. The streetlights along her road had disappeared and the road itself was no more than a rough cart track. Even more amazingly, the forest she had thought she had only dreamed was still there and was now a wonderland of black and white — the night’s fresh snowfall coating every branch so that the trees glittered in the sunlight with a million points of silver.

Just then there was a soft tapping on the door, which opened to admit a small elf carrying a tray with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. “Happy Christmas Day my lady,” trilled the elf, “everything is nearly ready, and your host requests that you join him at one o’clock for a pre-dinner glass of mulled ale.”

Everything appeared to be as the elf had said, as through the open door wafted the delicious smell of roasting turkey from the kitchen downstairs, and after pinching herself, Sherry said to herself, “Well if this is a dream it is certainly a very nice one, so I might as well enjoy it,” and she smiled happily.

After she had showered and brushed her teeth, Sherry looked in her closet for something suitably festive to wear but plumped after much thought for a simple white silk blouse and a knee length skirt of deep crimson. However, as it was Christmas Day, she thought better of her normal practical cotton underwear and put on her favourite silk lingerie with sheer stockings and suspenders. “I don’t know what has come over me, but I might as well feel sexy,” she thought to herself, “even though nothing is likely to happen.”

An hour later, after taking great care with her makeup and with her long black hair tied back with a red and sliver bow, Sherry entered her sitting room, slightly unsteady in a pair of high heeled silver slippers. Cernunnos rose from his seat by the blazing log fire, and stepped forward to greet her, taking her hand and raising it to his lips to give it the gentlest of kisses.

“On behalf of all the creatures of the forest, may I wish you a very Happy and Joyful Christmas,” he said, “and now it will be my pleasure to make this the best day of your life.”

Some hours later after a wonderful meal, and when everything had been cleared away, the elves all disappeared leaving Sherry and Cernunnos alone together. Cernunnos poured them each a brandy, and then sat down next to her on the settee. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him with her head resting on his chest.