One of the other odd things about this books is the way that time seems to move in different directions at different times or for different people, but not in an explicit way as in The King of Elfland's Daughter or the original story of Thomas the Rhymer. I'm thinking in particular of the way that Tom Lynn seems older at the beginning than he does at the end, which is explained (sort of) as being a shift in Polly's perspective as she gets older but feels weirder (more uncanny) than that.