In another subjective now, the classroom was hushed, listening to a rather expurgated version of their teacher's story. Alice had edited out the fine detail: she was damned if she was giving the kids anything they could use against her.
"Elves are extremely dangerous" she repeated. "I knew nothing about them then, and that made it more dangerous still. Some of you may encounter them when you are out there working on a contract, and what is the third rule of the Concordat? Anyone?"
She went to the board and chalked up, under "ELVES", the old saw "Knowledge Dispels Fear".
"Elves are a magical creature. They have the power to reach into your head and read your deepest fears and your most private hopes. They will use both to enslave you and bind you to their will. I discovered in Lancre that iron, in all its forms, is the only defence and guard."
"They don't exist" sneered Deborah Rust. "Why are we wasting time discussing something that doesn't exist?"
"I wish I had your absolute certainty, Miss Rust. I bow to you for having such a solid, mature, appreciation of what is and what isn't, all by the age of thirteen. And for telling me, who was there, that I was very nearly inhumed by something that didn't exist. Very well done. And a sterling example of what we mean by over-confidence, by the way!"
Deborah Rust coloured. Alice went on: "Have those two iconographs got as far as Miss Rust yet? Please hasten them in her direction, if you please. Elves. Will extract from your head that which you most desire. Then they will use it as bait to steer you in their desired path. Mr Lavish, for example, might be offered gold in vast quantities. Miss Rust might be tempted with the idea that she will become the first female Patrician to rule this city."
Deborah Rust sat up with a start and looked at her teacher with sullen respect. Bullseye, thought Alice. Of course the Rusts crave power and respect. They're just too stupid to get it and wouldn't have the first idea of how to use it if they did. You don't need to be a witch to work that out.
"And that's where it begins. Your mind is not your own. It is under the control of another. And you have been inhumed, just as certainly as if it had been done with a knife or poison. Elves practice inhumation of the mind. Which is exactly why we should be aware that they exist and guard against them".
Araminta Tockley nodded, but said nothing.
"I might suggest that Elves would make an interesting study for the Teatime Prize. As far as I'm aware the topic hasn't been used before, and the judges would give credit for a new and fresh original submission. Perhaps a pupil planning the theoretical inhumation of the Queen of the Elves would win the prize this year, with the achievement earning their House some acclaim? Something for you to think about."
"And now for the moment where I take you all into my confidence and relate the painful and embarrassing way in which Lancre taught me the dangers of over-confidence. Miss Tockley, you might see the punchline sooner than the other pupils, so your silence would be appreciated? Thank you.
"It all started a day or two later, when I went into the Ramtops foothills to check the possibilities of the burial mounds there…"
It was a classic Bronze Age mound, Alice decided. A beauty. Untouched, allowed to grow over with bramble and furze and heather, its true nature concealed except to the eye of the archaeologist, its original purpose long lost in the mists of time. She walked around it, selecting her spot.
They're normally built over a trilithon, which dictates the shape of the mound. Two upright roughly squared slabs, with another placed horizontally over the top, like an incomplete stone box. The dead King is laid to rest inside, with all the worldly chattels and wealth he needs to go into the next world with, and then earth is mounded over everything to make an artificial hillock.
Alice tilted her head to one side, rested her weight on her pickaxe, and stroked her jaw thoughtfully. It was two or three days on from the debacle at the Dancers: she'd stayed in her room reading Birdwhistle for much of that time, fighting off the ghosts of her childhood and adolescence that the Elf-Queen had raised. With the Elvish artifacts securely stowed in an iron-lined box – the old man had been deadly specific about that - she'd read everything Birdwhistle had written about the Gentry, no longer disposed to dismiss it as excitable folklore, accepting the possibility that in this weird country, his Antiquities described literal truth.
A nagging worry picked at her mind.
The old burial mounds have their Guardians. Morality and Decency forbid that I should write more of Them, but it is that case that some Mounddes are warded by a terrible and implacable Keeper who will wreak vengeance upon those who seek to despoil them.
Alice lifted the pickaxe, still bedeviled with the uneasy feeling that she was being watched. She suspected the little fat witch from Lancre village was tailing her: what she'd suspected to be a Banshee that first day, swooping down in the mist, also fitted the idea of a witch on a broomstick, now she'd had time to think it over. She sensed the witch nearby: but there was something else there, a hive-mind instinct. Bees? Better not smack the pick into a hive, then. OK, if I go in here, I'll find the edge of the trilithon upright, then careful excavation should get me inside the mound to catalogue what's inside…
She hefted, braced her legs, and swung… to her surprise, the blow never made it. The pickaxe appeared to fly out of her hands and disappear off on its own. There was a flash of blue, but she was unable to ponder its significance for very long as something, or an awful lot of small different somethings, crashed into her with a roar of noise. She made out a few individual words in the clamour:-
Hey, Bigjobs!
Feegle wha'hey!
There can ounly be twa'thousand!
We're the wee boys and nae bother!
NacMacFeegle!
Ye frae the Corporation? Yon's oor HOOSE ye was startin' tae knock doon!
Bluidy bigjobs!
Bluidy Corporation! Tryin' tae evict us!
Alice felt herself floating on her back, perhaps nine inches or so above ground level, with what felt like hundreds of little hands – little, very STRONG hands – holding her so firmly that she could barely move.
One of the things was standing in her chest, with a lot more mass than a six-inch high blue sprite should have. It had red hair held back in pigtails, a villainous grin on its face, and was wearing nothing more than a soiled tartan wrap. As the noise subsided, the thing on her chest shouted
"Hey, fellas! Yon's a guirly bigjob!" and threw itself onto her left breast, exultantly shouting "Bouncy or whit!" Alice screamed and heaved, at both the shock and the absurdity of it. Am I about to be sexually assaulted by a hundred or so very small… and very optimistic… six-inch high rapists?
Another of the sprites stepped up onto her shoulder.
"Sorry, miss. Some o' they scunners have got no' the slightest idea of how tae behave tae a lady. If ye'll permit?"
Alice nodded, wide eyed. As the newcomer beckoned the sprite who was playing bouncy castles on her bosom, drew him over, then delivered an excruciatingly loud head butt.
"Ye dinna touch a lady in that way, ye puir durty-minded wee creature that ye are!"
"Sorry, Big Yan" said the one who'd been taking liberties, just before he keeled over backwards.
"Brought up in a midden, some ae 'em" said the Big Yan. Alice relaxed: she took stock, and realized there were quite a lot of parts of Alice Band that the little blue sprites were very conscientiously not touching. As these coincided with the list of parts Alice Band reserved only for the touch of her very closest friends, and then only by invitation, she felt a little happier about this. It appeared to rule out one unpleasant possibility, anyway. But even allowing for the limited range of places the little blue men were holding her by, she was still stuck fast.
"Ye just tell me if my standing here on your shouder is taking liberties wi' your person, lassie" the spokes-sprite said, conversationally.
"Not at all. By comparison." Alice said, politely. "er… are you in charge here?"
"I'm the Kelda's man and Big Yan o' the clan, aye. They listen tae me."
"Well…er… can I go now?"
"Tell me your business first, aboot oor barrow. Ye was aboot tae start giein' it laldy and chopping great lumps oot o'oor wall. That whisnae nice, lassie"
"I'm an archaeologist" Alice said. "It's what I do."
At the mention of the word archaeologist, a great noise went up.
Ark-ay-oh-lodgey! Yon's almost as bad as lawyerin'!
Worse! A lawyer might take your hoose away but only an archy ologist wuild knock it doon!
And they'd hiv yer gold and yer tresaurs!
"Lawyers?"
"And Archie Ollogists!"
The Big Yan whistled backwards through his teeth. This to Alice was not good.
"Archaeologist, hey? We dinna see many of they around these parts! Aye well, we'll have to let ye go, lassie"
"Thank you." said Alice, heartfelt. "Look, I didn't know – ay didnae ken – it was where you lived."
"Aye, lassie. " said the Big Yan. "But just so ye ken the noo, and you can gang afley and tell all they other archaeologists tae no' bother calling on us wi' spades and pickaxes, we're still gauin' tae throw ye intae the river first, before we let ye go. Nothin' personal, mind."
Alice felt herself moving horizontally and very quickly.
"YIN! TAN! TETHERA! " then she was in freefall. She landed with a loud, cold, splash, her head went under for a second, and then she was sitting up, dripping and coughing, trailing riverweed. The riverbank was crowded with little blue men, jeering and making rude gestures.
Two more splashes announced the arrival of her pick and shovel, which landed just near enough to splash her.
"Awright, ye wee schemies, ye've had your fun!"
The little blue men turned with alarm and obvious fear.
"Waily, waily! 'Tis the hag! Waily!"
"Aw Goad! 'Tis the calleach herself!"
The little fat woman from the pub came strolling up to the riverbank, Alice's pack nonchalantly slung from one shoulder. At the sight of Alice, she burst out laughing.
"Oh my… that's got to be the second-funniest thing I seen all week!"
Alice glared, but inwardly felt like she was going to burst into tears. It was all going so wrong!
"I rescued your pack, miss. Little devils was rootin' in it. They've had a bottle of medicinal alcohol, by the look of it, out your first-aid kit."
She extended a hand, and helped Alice upright. The sound of distant singing and fighting came from not far away.
"You'd better get your spade and pick and things, missy. Name's Gytha Ogg, by the way".
A memory was sparked in Alice. "You know my tutor. Professor Massingham-Montgomery-Bird. He asked to be remembered to you".
Mrs Ogg's face crinkled in a warm smile. "I remember. Monty Bird. Funny, that. I fished him out of exactly this same stream thirty-odd years ago. And for the same reasons. He wouldn't be tole, neither, about the Feegle."
"He knew?" Alice blurted out. She felt a rivulet of water cascade down her leg.
"Come on, missy. Let's get you into a warm bath and them wet clothes dried before you catch your death."
Alice let herself be led. She reflected on exactly what her tutor had told her, with that strange faraway look on his face. "Off you go then, my dear. I really do believe you are in an un-rivalled position to learn something of great importance about archaeological excavation in Lancre!"
And he wasn't kidding, either. She squelched her way back to Lancre town.