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She herself had short red hair and a face which was not so much freckled as one big freckle with occasional areas of skin.
Pepper’s given first names were Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. She had been given them in a naming ceremony in a muddy valley field that contained three sick sheep and a number of leaky polythene teepees. Her mother had chosen the Welsh valley of Pant-y-Gyrdl as the ideal site to Return to Nature. (Six months later, sick of the rain, the mosquitoes, the men, the tent-trampling sheep who ate first the whole commune’s marijuana crop and then its antique minibus, and by now beginning to glimpse why almost the entire drive of human history has been an attempt to get as far away from Nature as possible, Pepper’s mother returned to Pepper’s surprised grandparents in Tadfield, bought a bra, and enrolled in a sociology course with a deep sigh of relief.)
There are only two ways a child can go with a name like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild, and Pepper had chosen the other one: the three male Them had learned this on their first day of school, in the playground, at the age of four.
They had asked her her name, and, all innocent, she had told them.
Subsequently a bucket of water had been needed to separate Pippin Galadriel Moonchild’s teeth from Adam’s shoe. Wensleydale’s first pair of spectacles had been broken, and Brian’s sweater needed five stitches.
The Them were together from then on, and Pepper was Pepper forever, except to her mother, and (when they were feeling especially courageous, and the Them were almost out of earshot) Greasy Johnson and the Johnsonites, the village’s only other gang.
Adam drummed his heels on the edge of the milk crate that was doing the office of a seat, listening to this bickering with the relaxed air of a king listening to the idle chatter of his courtiers.
He chewed lazily on a straw. It was a Thursday morning. The holidays stretched ahead, endless and unsullied. They needed filling up.
He let the conversation float around him like the buzzing of grasshoppers or, more precisely, like a prospector watching the churning gravel for a glint of useful gold.
“In our Sunday paper it said there was thousands of witches in the country,” said Brian. “Worshiping Nature and eating health food an’ that. So I don’t see why we shouldn’t have one round here. They were floodin’ the country with a Wave of Mindless Evil, it said.”
“What, by worshipin’ Nature and eatin’ health food?” said Wensleydale.
“That’s what it said.”
The Them gave this due consideration. They had once—at Adam’s instigation—tried a health food diet for a whole afternoon. Their verdict was that you could live very well on healthy food provided you had a big cooked lunch beforehand.
Brian leaned forward conspiratorially.
“And it said they dance round with no clothes on,” he added. “They go up on hills and Stonehenge and stuff, and dance with no clothes on.”
This time the consideration was more thoughtful. The Them had reached that position where, as it were, the roller coaster of Life had almost completed the long haul to the top of the first big humpback of puberty so that they could just look down into the precipitous ride ahead, full of mystery, terror, and exciting curves.
“Huh,” said Pepper.
“Not my aunt,” said Wensleydale, breaking the spell. “Definitely not my aunt. She just keeps trying to talk to my uncle.”
“Your uncle’s dead,” said Pepper.
“She says he still moves a glass about,” said Wensleydale defensively. “My father says it was moving glasses about the whole time that made him dead in t
he first place. Don’t know why she wants to talk to him,” he added, “they never talked much when he was alive.”
“That’s necromancy, that is,” said Brian. “It’s in the Bible. She ought to stop it. God’s dead against necromancy. And witches. You can go to Hell for it.”
There was a lazy shifting of position on the milk crate throne. Adam was going to speak.
The Them fell silent. Adam was always worth listening to. Deep in their hearts, the Them knew that they weren’t a gang of four. They were a gang of three, which belonged to Adam. But if you wanted excitement, and interest, and crowded days, then every Them would prize a lowly position in Adam’s gang above leadership of any other gang anywhere.
“Don’t see why everyone’s so down on witches,” Adam said.
The Them glanced at one another. This sounded promising.
“Well, they blight crops,” said Pepper. “And sink ships. And tell you if you’re going to be king and stuff. And brew up stuff with herbs.”
“My mother uses herbs,” said Adam. “So does yours.”
“Oh, those are all right,” said Brian, determined not to lose his position as occult expert. “I expect God said it was all right to use mint and sage and so on. Stands to reason there’s nothing wrong with mint and sage.”
“And they can make you be ill just by looking at you,” said Pepper. “It’s called the Evil Eye. They give you a look, and then you get ill and no one knows why. And they make a model of you and stick it full of pins and you get ill where all the pins are,” she added cheerfully.
