Beware the faeries, whose touch can change you!Megan O'Hare was a normal Irish girl, except for being cursed with having faerie hair and eyes. Teased and abused from childhood for this, she still longed to meet a faerie, or even to see the Land of Faerie. Her mother, inclined like most villagers to distrust any possible contact with the magic beings, none the less admitted to having seen one herself, which makes Megan even more determined to succeed in finding them.Advised how to find Faerie by the wife of a traveling tinker, she sets out at age fifteen to find the way, and much to her shock, not only succeeds, but ends up a prisoner of the Faerie Queen.Forced to stay months in Faerie, Megan learns the ways and secrets of the faeries, before being marked by them and sent home. She finds her welcome home even less auspicious than her childhood, her new abilities terrifying in spite of their usefulness.Giving her firstborn child to the faeries, rather than letting him die, is only another offense against all the villagers consider proper. Will she ever have peace? Will she manage to come to terms with the church's teaching, without surrendering her understanding of Faerie? And what did the Faerie Queen mean by "We will claim you, in the end"?A deep and novel exploration of love, God, faith and faeries.