“Where're we goin', Jason?”
“I reckon we've gone down Slippery Hollow and're circling back toward the town,” said Jason, hopping past Baker. “Keep goin'. Carter!”
“The rain's got in the keys, Jason!”
“Don't matter! They don't know the difference! It's good enough for folk music!”
“I think I broke my stick on that last one, Jason!”
“Just you keep dancing, Tinker! Now, lads . . . how about Gathering Peasecods? We might as well get some practice in, since we're here . . .”
“There's some people up ahead,” said Tailor, as he skipped past, “I can see torches an' that.”
“Human, two, three, or more elves?”
“Dunno!”
Jason spun and danced back.
“Is that you, our Jason?”
Jason cackled as the voice echoed among the dripping trees.
“It's our mam! And our Shawn. And - and lots of people! We've made it, lads!”
“Jason,” said Carter.
“Yes?”
“I ain't sure I can stop!”
The Queen examined her face in a mirror attached to the tent pole.
“Why?” said Granny. “What is it you see?”
o;I'll just stroll along behind,” said Nanny.
“Oh. Well. Maybe as far as the jaws of hell, then.”
“Amazing,” said Casanunda to Nanny, as the crowd filed reluctantly toward the armoury.
“You just got to know how to deal with people.”
“They'll follow where an Ogg leads?”
“Not exactly,” said Nanny, “but if they know what's good for 'em they'll go where an Ogg follows.”
Magrat stepped out from under the trees, and the moor land lay ahead of her.
A whirlpool of cloud swirled over the Dancers, or at least, over the place where the Dancers had been. She could make out one or two stones by the flickering light, lying on their side or rolled down the slope of the hill.
The hill itself glowed. Something was wrong with the landscape. It curved where it shouldn't curve. Distances weren't right. Magrat remembered a woodcut shoved in as a place marker in one of her old books. It showed the face of an old crone but, if you stared at it, you saw it was also the head of a young woman; a nose became a neck, an eyebrow became a necklace. The images seesawed back and forth. And like everyone else, she'd squinted herself silly trying to see them both at the same time.
The landscape was doing pretty much the same thing. What was a hill was also at the same time a vast snowbound panorama. Lancre and the land of the elves were trying to occupy the same space.
The intrusive country wasn't having it all its own way. Lancre was fighting back.
There was a circle of tents just on the cusp of the warring landscapes, like a beachhead on an alien shore. They were brightly collared. Everything about the elves was beautiful, until the image tilted, and you saw it from the other side. . .