And perhaps an elf could learn to know mercy, to discover humanity . . .
‘If you learn things,’ she finished softly, ‘you might find yourself building a different kind of kingdom.’
fn1 Nanny’s friend on that occasion had been Count Casanunda the lowwayman – a highwayman who carried a stepladder on his horse, on account of his being a dwarf, and was most gallant towards the ladies he encountered.
fn2 A thought that she would most certainly grow out of, assuming she survived long enough.
fn3 It has in fact been said that elves are like cats; but cats will work together – for instance, when sharing a kill – while elves squabble and fight so that a third party may go home with the food.
fn4 It looked a rather poisonous green before it was heated up, but in most cases the end certainly justified the greens.
fn5 It disappeared pretty quickly too, as anyone given fairy gold soon discovered. Usually by the morning, which often meant a lively evening in the pub. And an even livelier evening the following night if visiting the same establishment.
fn6 Very true, though getting out again was sometimes trickier, especially if there was strong drink about.
CHAPTER 16
Mr Sideways
THE OLD BOYS in the villages around Granny Weatherwax’s cottage had swiftly taken a liking to Geoffrey. They respected Nanny Ogg and Tiffany, of course, but they really liked Geoffrey.
They would taunt him sometimes; after all, he was in a woman’s business, but when he got on his broomstick – sometimes even with his goat perched behind him rather than harnessed to its little cart – and whizzed away to the horizon, they were speechless.
Even when he was really busy, he always had time to stop and chat and there was always a brew on in any shed when he came by, and a broken biscuit for Mephistopheles. The old boys were fascinated by the goat, but wary nonetheless after the day when someone gave it a drink of ale just to see what would happen and, to their astonishment, Mephistopheles danced like a ballerina and then kicked a young tree so hard that its trunk split in two.
‘It’s like those folk who do mushi,’ said Stinky Jim.
‘I don’t think that’s the right word,’ said Smack Tremble. ‘Ain’t mushi something you eat? Out in . . . foreign parts.’
‘You mean One-man-he-go-up, he-go-down,’ Captain Makepeace said. ‘A way of fighting.’
‘That’s it!’ said Stinky Jim. ‘There was a fellow at the market in Slice who could do that.’
‘There’s a lot of people in Slice who can do that kind of thing,’ Smack Tremble added with a shiver. ‘Odd place, Slice.’fn1
They sat and thought about Slice for a moment. You could find anything at Slice market if you looked hard enough. Famously a man once sold his wife there, where the phrase ‘bring and buy’ was taken literally, and he went home with a second-hand wheelbarrow and felt he had the best of the bargain. Then they looked at the remains of the sapling and agreed that Mephistopheles was indeed a remarkable goat, but perhaps it would be best to leave his diet alone.
The remarkable goat himself stoically chewed his way through the long grass by the pub fence as though nothing untoward had happened and then trotted off to find Geoffrey.
On this particular fine morning, Geoffrey was at Laughing Boy Sideways’s house. Tiffany had been treating a particularly troublesome bunion of his which had resisted her ministrations for weeks. She had been considering breaking her rule and using magic on the thing, just to be done with it, when Geoffrey decided to pop in to see Mr Sideways on a day when Tiffany was away at the Chalk. He found the old man by the back door of his cottage, just about to hobble down the path to the old barn. Instead of heading back into the cottage as he would have done if Tiffany had called, Mr Sideways beckoned to Geoffrey to follow him down the path towards the rickety barn. And it was as Geoffrey watched the old boy struggling painfully along in his old army boots that he noticed something very wrong.
‘Well, dang me!’ Mr Sideways said when Geoffrey prised the offending hobnail from his left boot. ‘If I’d known that was what the trouble was, I’d have dealt with the bugger meself!’ He looked at Geoffrey with bright eyes. ‘Thank ’ee, lad.’
Old Mr Sideways lived on his own and had done so for as long as anyone could remember. He was meticulously dressed and in the city might have been described as ‘dapper’. Apart from his work overalls, which were washed regularly but were streaked with paint and oil, he was always spick and span. So was his little cottage. The living room, which he kept immaculately tidy, had paintings of people in old-fashioned dress on the wall – Geoffrey assumed these were portraits of Mr Sideways’s parents, although he never spoke of them. Everything the man did he did carefully. Geoffrey liked him, and even though he was a very private man, he had taken to Geoffrey.
The shed Mr Sideways had constructed adjacent to the old barn was also immaculate. Every shelf was neatly stacked with carefully labelled old tobacco tins and jars. His tools were hung against the walls, neatly ranked by size. They were clean and sharp too. Tiffany had never been allowed beyond Mr Sideways’s living room, but Geoffrey had soon been welcomed to share a mug of tea and a biscuit in the shed by the barn.
Each one of the sheds Geoffrey visited on his rounds of the old boys was different, expressing the personality of the occupant, unfettered by female intervention. Some were chaotic, with piles of scrap and half-made objects scattered about; others were tidier – like Captain Makepeace’s shed, which was full of paints, brushes and canvases, but still had a clear sense of order.
But no one was as tidy as Mr Sideways. And then Geoffrey noticed something missing. All the other sheds had at least one work in progress visible, whether it was a half-made bird table, or a stripped-down wheelbarrow with a new shaft, but there was nothing like that to be seen in Mr Sideways’s shed. And he evaded the question when Geoffrey asked what he was working on.
‘What are you up to, Mr Sideways?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘You look like a man who has been thinking, and I know you are a canny man at that.’
Mr Sideways cleared his throat. ‘Well, you see, lad, I am building a machine. I’ve no interest in bird tables or mug trees and the like. But machines now . . .’ He paused, then looked carefully at Geoffrey. ‘I’ve been thinking that it might be useful, what with the troubles folks are having.’
Geoffrey sat calmly, waiting for the old boy to fin
ish his tea and reach a conclusion. Eventually Mr Sideways put down his mug and stood up, brushing the crumbs off his lap. He swept them up with a small pan and brush he clearly kept just for that purpose, washed out the mugs, dried and stacked them neatly on a shelf, then opened the door.