"In a place called Far Away and a time called Long Ago, there once lived a woodcutter and his wife, and they were happy but for the fact that they had no child. Across a plain and halfway up a mountain, towered a mighty castle where lived the king and queen of the land, and they too had no child.

"And long before that Long Ago, and far beyond that Far Away, in a place of deepest magic hovering beyond the mists and veils of time itself, there is talk of change."