'Vampires?!' shouted Agnes. 'You saw the vampires? Last night?'
'Well, I mean, yes, I studied them at length at the seminary, but I never thought I'd see them standing around talking about drinking blood and things, really, I'm surprised the King allows it-'
'And they didn't... affect your mind?'
'I did have that terrible migraine. Does that count? I thought it was the prawns.'
A cry rang through the woods. It seemed to
have many components, but mostly it sounded as though a turkey was being throttled at the other end of a tin tube.
'And what the heck was that?' shouted Oats.
Agnes looked around, bewildered. She'd grown up in the Lancre woods. Oh, you got strange things sometimes, passing through, but generally they contained nothing more dangerous than other people. Now, in this tarnished light, even the trees were starting to look suspicious.
'Let's at least get down to Bad Ass,' she said, tugging at Oats's hand.
'You what?'
Agnes sighed. 'It's the nearest village.'
'Bad Ass?'
'Look, there was a donkey, and it stopped in the middle of the river, and it wouldn't go backwards or forwards,' said Agnes, as patiently as possible. Lancre people got used to explaining this. 'Bad Ass. See? Yes, I know that "Disobedient Donkey" might have been more... acceptable, but-'
The horrible cry echoed around the woods again. Agnes thought of all the things that were rumoured to be in the mountains, and dragged Oats after her like a badly hitched cart.
Then the sound was right in front of them and, at a turn in the lane, a head emerged from a bush.
Agnes had seen pictures of an ostrich.
So... start with one of them, but make the head and neck in violent yellow, and give the head a huge ruff of red and purple feathers and two big round eyes, the pupils of which jiggled drunkenly as the head moved back and forth...
'Is that some sort of local chicken?' warbled Oats.
'I doubt it,' said Agnes. One of the long feathers had a tartan pattern.
The cry started again, but was strangled halfway through when Agnes stepped forward, grabbed the thing's neck and pulled.
A figure rose from the undergrowth, dragged up by his arm.
'Hodgesaargh?'
He quacked at her.
'Take that thing out of your mouth,' said Agnes. 'You sound like Mr Punch.'
He removed the whistle. 'Sorry, Miss Nitt.'
'Hodgesaargh, why - and I realize I might not like the answer - why are you hiding in the woods with your arm dressed up like Hetty the Hen and making horrible noises through a tube?'
'Trying to lure the phoenix, miss.'
'The phoenix? That's a mythical bird, Hodgesaargh.'
'That's right, miss. There's one in Lancre, miss. It's very young, miss. So I thought I might be able to attract it.'
She looked at the brightly coloured glove. Oh, yes - if you raised chicks, you had to let them know what kind of bird they were, so you used a sort of glove-puppet. But...