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‘Good,’ said Nanny. ‘Well done. Don’t trouble yourself, Tiff. If they was hurtin’ that baby, well, what else could you do? You didn’t . . . enjoy it?’ she asked carefully, eyes shrewd in her wrinkled face.
‘Of course not!’ Tiffany cried. ‘But, Nanny, I just . . . I did it almost without thinking.’
‘Well, you might have to do it again soon if the elves keeps on comin’,’ Nanny said briskly. ‘We’re witches, Tiffany. We has the power for a reason. We just ’as to make sure as it’s the right reason, and if there’s an elf comin’ through and hurtin’ a baby, take it from me, that is the right reason.’ She paused. ‘If’n people do wrong things, well, why would they be surprised if bad things then happen to them. Most of ’em knows this, you know. I remember Esme tellin’ me once, she was in some hamlet or other – Spickle, Spackle, somewhere like that – and people was tryin’ to string up this man for killin’ two children and she said as he knew he deserved it; ’pparently ’e said, “I did it in liquor and it ended in ’emp”.’ She sat wearily down, allowing Greebo to clamber onto her ample lap. ‘Reality, Tiff,’ she added. ‘Life an’ death. You knows it.’ She scratched the tomcat behind what might be described as an ear by someone with very poor eyesight. ‘Is the child all right?’
‘Yes, I took her back to her parents but they . . . can’t . . . won’t . . . look after her properly.’
‘Some folk just don’t want to see the truth, even when you points it out to ’em. That’s the trouble with elves, they will keep comin’ back.’ Nanny sighed heavily. ‘People tell stories about ’em, Tiff,’ she said. ‘They make ’em sound fun – it’s as if their glamour hangs around after they’ve gone and stays in people’s heads, tellin’ ’em that elves is no problem. Just a bit of mischief.’ Nanny sank further into her chair, knocking a small family knick-knack off the table beside her. ‘Feegles,’ she said. ‘They’re mischief. But elves? Elves is different. You remember how the Cunning Man crept into people’s heads, Tiff? How he made people do things – awful things?’
Tiffany nodded, her mind replaying horrible images while her eyes still focused on the knick-knack on the floor. A present from Quirm from one of her daughters-in-law, and Nanny hadn’t even noticed she had knocked it over. Nanny. Who treasured every small object her family gave her. Who would never ever fail to notice if something was damaged.
‘Well, that’s nothin’ to what them elves might do, Tiff,’ Nanny continued. ‘There is nothin’ they likes more than watchin’ pain and terror, nothin’ that makes ’em laugh more. And they loves stealin’ babbies. You did well to stop them this time. They will come again, though.’
‘Well, then they will have to die again,’ said Tiffany flatly.
‘If you are there . . .’ Nanny said carefully.
Tiffany slumped. ‘But what else can we do? We can’t be everywhere.’
‘Well,’ said Nanny, ‘we’ve seen ’em off before. It was hard, for sure, but we can do it again. Can’t that elf of yorn help?’
‘Nightshade?’ Tiffany said. ‘They won’t listen to her the way things are right now! They threw her out.’
Nanny pondered a bit, then appeared to come to a decision. ‘There is someone they might listen to . . . or at least they used to listen to ’im. If he can be persuaded to take an interest.’ She looked at Tiffany appraisingly. ‘He don’t like to be disturbed. Though I have visited him before, once, with a friend’ – her eyes grew misty at the memoryfn1 – ‘and I think Granny and he may have had words in the past. He likes ladies, though. A pretty young thing like you might be just his cup of tea.’
Tiffany bristled. ‘Nanny, you can’t be suggesting—’
‘Lordy, no! Nothin’ like that. Just a bit of . . . persuadin’. You are good at persuadin’ folks, ain’t you, Tiff?’
‘I can do persuading,’ Tiffany said, relaxing a bit. ‘Who do you mean and where do I go?’
The Long Man. Tiffany had heard a lot about the Long Man, the barrow that led to the home of the King of the Elves – mostly from Nanny Ogg, who had gone into the barrow and met the King once before, when the elves had been getting unruly.
The professors would have said that the King lived in a long barrow from ancient times, when people didn’t wear clothing and there weren’t so many gods, and in a way the King himself was a kind of god – a god of life and death and, it seemed to Tiffany, of dirt and ragged clothing. And men still sometimes came to dance around by the barrow, horns on their heads and – usually – a strong drink in their hands. Unsurprisingly, they found it hard to persuade young women to go up there with them.
There were three mounds to the barrow, three very suggestive mounds that no country lass who had watched sheep and cows in action could fail to recognize – there was always a lot of giggling from the girls training to be witches when they first flew over it and saw it from the air.
Tiffany headed up
the overgrown path, pushing her way through thorns and trees, untangling her witch’s hat from a particularly insistent bush at one point, and stopped by the cave-like entrance. She was strangely reluctant to duck under the lintel, past the scratched drawing of the man with horns and down the steps she knew she would find once she had pushed aside the stone at the entrance.
I cannot face him just by myself, she thought with terror. I need someone who can at least tell people how I died.
And a wee voice said, ‘Crivens!’
‘Rob Anybody?’
‘Oh aye. We follow ye all the time, ye ken. Ye are the hag o’ the hills and the Long Man is a big hill.’
But, ‘Wait by the gate please, Rob, I must do this by myself,’ she said, suddenly filled with sureness that this was the right choice. She had killed the three elves; now she would face their king. ‘This is hag business, ye ken.’
‘But we knows the King,’ said Rob. ‘If’n we gae along wi’ ye, we can fight yon scunner in his ain world.’
‘Oh aye,’ added Wee Dangerous Spike. ‘A big laddie, ye ken, but I’ll gi’ the bogle a face full of Feegle he’ll nae forget.’ He experimentally nutted one of the entrance stones, bouncing his head off the rock with a satisfying clunk.
Tiffany sighed. ‘That’s what I’m afeared – I mean, afraid of,’ she said. ‘I want to ask the King for his help. Not anger him. And I know the Feegles have history with him . . .’
‘Aye, that’s us,’ said Rob proudly. ‘We is history.’
