Rose arrives in England and goes to Fawney Rig, where Unity spend a majority of her life asleep. Fawney Rig was originally the home of Roderick Burgess and later became a nursing home run by Paul MaGuire, the lover of Alex Burgess, who has been asleep since Dream’s escape in 1988.
While wandering around the house Rose encounters three women who are residents of Fawney Rig. One of the women, Magda Treadgold, tells Rose a story of a Man “Who Loved The Ladies.”
This man would try to romance any woman with a pretty face and once they outlived his desire he would move on to another town and another woman.
One day he saw a beautiful woman bathing in a river and he promised her that if she was his “lady-love” he would give back the clothes he had hidden. She agreed but only under the condition that she would be his wife and would be married at the next church they passed. He agreed and promised saying things like “If I don’t marry you, may that the worms shall eat me” and “if I don’t marry you, I wish that our children might grow wings and fly away.”
She became his “lady-love” which is really just a polite way of saying that they had sex.
On their travels they passed a church, but the man made an excuse as to why they could not be married in there. Eventually she became pregnant and needs a house to live in.
The Man finds a cottage inhabited by an Old Woman. The man went into the house and found the Old Woman was asleep in the bed. She was old and weak and the man smothered her and buried her in the midden heap, which is a dump for domestic waste. According to Magda, it is unclear if the woman was a witch or simply an old woman. That aspect changes depending on who is telling the story.
The man told the woman that his old aunt had died and she left him this cottage.
For the next several years, the woman had three children, all beautiful girls and the man would visit a few days at a time and then leave to go seduce other women. Sometimes he would bring back a hen or a pig for the mother and his children to eat.
One day when he returned home his children were not at the cottage.
When he asked the woman where his girls were she replied “gathering berries” or “off fishing”. Eventually he becomes persistant and asks where they are and she tells him that “they’ve flown away.” The man does not believe the woman and when she will not tell him where his daughters are he goes outside and gets an axe and kills the woman.
He then hears a noise outside and goes to see what it is.
His three daughters, who now have wings, fly down from the sky to their father. When they ask where their mother is he replies that she is “gathering berries” and when they ask about the blood on his hands and on the floor he tells them he was “killing a pig.”
The youngest of the three girls looks under the bed and finds the body of their mother.
They let out a long sad wail and jumped on him, scratching and tearing at his flesh, until he was dead.
They flew off into the sky and were never seen again.
The Little Girls with Wings appear in Sandman # 62 on pages 13-15.
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