Disclaimer: Last time I checked, my name wasn't Brandon Mull. Therefore, I do not own Fablehaven.

A BIG thank-you to Sun-Kissed Demigod, who beta'd the prologue and first chapter of this story (and did a great job of it, too!).


Prologue

Today, many people are aware of the fact that your average spy does not work in a glamorous environment. Still, many people dream of car chases, stakeouts outside seedy hotels, and the like. A few people may imagine spies leading lives of comfort and fame, while knowing those type of stories are just that- stories. Or are they?

Imaging, if you will, a being known as a dryad. Put her together with two hamadryads with a talent for singing, a hamadryad who plays the flute, and a hamadryad who plays the violin. Give them all a sense of what is right and what is wrong, a desire for thrill, and a want- no, need- to fight darkness and restore light. The result? Our story- a story of the beings mentioned above. The story of Leatara Westenra, Merwenna Tyril, Dioni Downes, Joyra Neyland, and Caroilana Nesbitt.

It all began when the Society of the Evening Star started becoming powerful again. The Knights of the Dawn were in desperate need of funds and trustworthy couriers. On Fablehaven, a group of friends, the dryad Leatara and the hamadryads Merwenna, Dioni, Joyra, and Caroilana, decided to do something about this.

The girls had always been different from most nymphs. They had an interest in human affairs, including the Knights of the Dawn (to this day, no one but the girls themselves know how they learned of the Knights). What they loved most about humans, though, was their music. Not the rock and pop widely known today, but classical and folk. They even learned how to play and sing human music themselves. This isn't very surprising if you consider that all music came from the nymphs in the first place, though.

When the call for help went out from the Knights, the friends somehow learned of it, and volunteered to leave the trees to devote their lives to the struggle between light and dark. To them, the chance to make a difference in the war and to restore light was more important than immortality. So, when the Knights accepted their offer, for the first time in millennia, nymphs left the trees not for love, but for light.

They already had the skill to play any song suited to their instruments and voices. They only needed two things: a name, and other people to play with.

An Soilsiu, the name they settled on, was Dioni's idea. Her tree had originally grown in Ireland before being transplanted, hamadryad and all, to Fablehaven , and she knew the language better than the Irish themselves. They all agreed upon the name. It was perfect.

And, for those of you who can't speak Irish, An Soilsiu means "The Enlightenment."

Years of hard work followed their desertion of the trees. They hired other musicians, most of them like-minded nymphs from other preserves, to play with them. They learned many songs, hired and fired many human musicians, and finally, three years after the Society started becoming active, they performed for the first time. The crowds loved them.