'If you attached a piece of string to her I suppose we could tow her like some sort of balloon,' said Lacrimosa.
Besides, there was always the chance that, at some point, she might find herself in a room with Lacrimosa. When that happened, she wouldn't need garlic, or a stake, or an axe. Just a little talk about people who were too unpleasant, too malicious, too thin. Just five minutes alone.
And perhaps a pin, said Perdita.
Under the rabbit hole, down below the bank, was a wide, low-roofed chamber. Tree roots wound among the stones in the wall.
There were plenty of such things around Lancre. The kingdom had been there many years, ever since the ice withdrew. Tribes had pillaged, tilled, built and died. The clay walls and reed thatch of the living houses had long since rotted and been lost but, down under the moundy banks, the abodes of the dead survived. No one knew now who'd been buried there. Occasionally the spoil heap outside a badger sett would reveal a piece of bone or a scrap of corroded armour. The Lancrastians didn't go digging themselves, reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit.
One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed a sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you'd never see your horse again, either...
Down on the earth floor under the bank a fire was burning darkly, filling the barrow with smoke which exited through various hidden crannies.
There was a pear-shaped rock beside it.
Verence tried to sit up, but his body didn't want to obey.
'Dinna scanna' whista,' said the rock.
It unfolded its legs. It was, he realized, a woman, or at least a female, blue like the other pixies but at least a foot high and so fat that it was almost spherical. It looked exactly like the little figurines back in the days of ice and mammoths, when what men really looked for in a woman was quantity. For the sake of modesty, or merely to mark the equator, it wore what Verence could only think of as a tutu. The whole effect reminded him of a spinning top he'd had when he was a child.
'The Kelda says,' said a cracked voice by his ear, 'that ye... must get... ready.'
Verence turned his head the other way and tried to focus on a small wizened pixie right in front of his nose. Its skin was faded. It had a long white beard. It walked with two sticks.
'Ready? For what?'
'Good.' The old pixie banged its sticks on the ground. 'Craik'n shaden ach, Feegle!'
The blue men rushed at Verence from the shadows. Hundreds of hands grabbed him. Their bodies formed a human pyramid, pulling him upright against the wall. Some clung to the tree roots that looped across the ceiling, tugging on his nightshirt to keep him vertical.
A crowd of others ran across the floor with a full-sized crossbow and propped it on a stone close to him.
'Er... I say...' Verence murmured.
The Kelda waddled into the shadows and returned with her pudgy fists clenched. She went to the fire and held them over the flames.
'Yin!' said the old pixie.
'I say, that's aimed right at my-'
'Yin!' shouted the Nac mac Feegle.
'... ton!'
'Ton!'
'Um, it's, er, right...'
'Tetra!'
The Kelda dropped something on the fire. A white flame roared up, etching the room in black and white. Verence blinked.
When he managed to see again there was a crossbow bolt sticking in the wall just by his ear.
The Kelda growled some order, while white light still danced around the walls. The bearded pixie rattled his sticks again.
'Now ye must walk awa'. Noo!'