“Let’s go and see!” I said, leaping up. I was so pleased that I rushed out to the kitchen with the teapot and a pile of plates. Olwen looked very surprised. “We’ll be back for lunch,” I told her, and went racing off after Grundo, who was already trotting out along the way we had taken yesterday.
But things are never that easy. There were only a few harebells growing by the head of the valley, and I knew I needed thick drifts of them. It took us half the morning to find the right kind of sloping, sheltered hilltop where harebells grew in quantities. By that time we were well into the hills on the chapel side of the manse. But at last we found the place, a small, warm dip full of a great bank of fluttering, pale blue bells. We sat down on the sunny edge of them, and I carefully picked five of the harebells and wound their wiry stems among the fingers of my left hand in the correct pattern. Then I called out the correct words from the file, three times.
And waited.
Our shadows had moved on the hillside over the dry grass quite noticeably before anything happened. Grundo had stretched out on the turf and then gone to sleep by that time. This was hard on him, because when a section of the harebell-covered hillside shifted gently to one side, he woke up with a jump and then didn’t dare move. I could see him staring sideways across the freckles on his nose all through the rest of what happened.
As I said, a piece of the hillside shifted. It was as if there had been an invisible fold in it up to then, which now straightened out to let a small person slip around the edge of it. The person had one hand up, pushing at the fold, and he was dreadfully out of breath.
“Your pardon, wise lady,” he panted. His voice was husky and high. “You patient. Wait long.”
I looked from him to the hillside. Space is as a folding screen to the Little People, said the knowledge in my head, and it seemed to be right. There was obviously twice as much of the hill, folded to keep the place where the person lived out of sight. I tried not to stare at the fold, or at the person, too hard. If I had been standing up, he would have come about to my knees. Up to then I had always thought that apart from their size, the Little People would be like small humans. This was not so. He was covered with soft, sandy hair, which grew thicker on his head and around his pointy ears. Being so hairy probably accounted for the fact that he was wearing almost no clothes, just crossed belts on his long top half and cheerful red drawers on his lower part. I found it really hard not to stare at his legs. They bent the other way from human legs. But his hands and arms were very like mine, though hairy, and he had an anxious little face rather like a cat’s, except that his eyes were brown. He wore a gold earring in one ear and kept flicking at it nervously. I expect I seemed horribly huge to him.
I didn’t want him to think I had come just to stare. I greeted him politely in what the file said were the right words.
“You know old talk,” he said respectfully. “Not necessary. Old talk hard for us these days. You wait, for they fetch me. I only one know speak your talk.”
I looked at the harebells drooping from my fingers. “These are supposed to make me able to understand your language,” I told him. “Why don’t you just speak the way you usually do?”
He was very put out. “But
I need learn! Practice,” he protested. “I hear, I know more than I know to say. Please use own talk.”
“All right,” I said. It seemed unkind to say anything else. “I’ve come to you for advice, really. Do you mind me asking you for help? Will you need anything in return?”
“No, no. No return. Just need to hear big person talk,” he said, and hopped forward to sort of squat-sit in front of me on his wrong-way-bending legs. This put him so nearly out of Grundo’s line of sight that Grundo had to roll both his eyes into the corners in order to see him. “Now you tell,” the small person said, and clasped his nearly human-shaped hands over his wrong-shaped knees. His smell drifted over me, like the smell of a very clean cat. “Make long story. Speak slow. I hear and learn.” He looked up at me, expectant and eager.
There is nothing that puts you off more, I find, than someone saying that. I explained very badly at first and kept thinking that I’d better put it more simply, and then thinking, No, he wants to learn more words. I said most things twice in the end. And he kept nodding and staring at me brightly, and I thought despondently, I bet he hasn’t understood a word!
But he had. When I finally faltered to a finish, he flicked his earring and looked sober. “Is bad thing,” he said gravely, “they trap one so great as Gwyn. Strangeness is, they do without know who they got. Is using his another name maybe. The Strong all have names a lot. Stupids. Learn name from book and not know who meaning. And is most greatly bad that such stupids work great plot. A pause. I think.”
With his furry elbows on his peculiar knees, he rested his chinless face in both hands and considered. I waited anxiously. Grundo seized the chance to roll his eyes back straight.
After a while the Little Person remarked out of his musings, “Wise ones of my folk been say magics acting up. This why.”
“And do they know—” I began.
He held up his hand to stop me, sandy pink palm forward. “Still pause. I still think.”
We waited. At length he seemed to finish thinking. He took his face out of his hands and looked up at me, bright and whiskery. “I think two things you do. One not may work. Other fiercely danger.”
“Please tell me anyway,” I said.
He nodded. “Am do. But all mix together difficult. Like magics mix here in Blest. Blest magics all laid together close, over and under, like weaving. These stupids pull out threads. Come could unravel, and that bad. If you do thing also in Blest, that might worse be nearly. You do first either thing, you do outside, that right. That secret. Or either yourself do thing so big it chance unravel, fierce also danger. You see? I know you understand.”
I didn’t. I had to think hard to get even some of this. “You’re saying that magic is so interlaced here in Blest, right?” I asked. “That if I want to do it safely and secretly, I have to do something right outside this world? Or if I don’t mind them knowing, I can do something so booming big here that it could untwist all the magics anyway?”
He seemed very pleased. “Booming big,” he said, several times. “Word I like.”
“Yes,” I said. “But what things?”
He was surprised. “Why, head of yours full of old knowings! Why need ask? I humble new person. But I tell. Outside thing, you call on person walk dark paths. Paths outside all worlds. No one here know you do. But not may work. Blest thing, booming big thing, you raise the land. Violent dangerous. Maybe blow apart—blow in small mess bits—blow—what call?” He made rocking movements with one hand. “What call?” he repeated appealingly.
I had no idea what he meant this time. “Sway? Wave? Rock?” I suggested.
“Balance!” Grundo said deeply, unable to bear any more. “He means the balance of magic, you fool!”
The small person leaped wildly to one side, just like a grasshopper, he was so startled. “Man not dead!” he said feelingly. “He safe? Not. I think I go now.”