And back in the subjective now, where a thirty-two year old Miss Alice Band finishes writing "PICTSIES" on the board, with a flourish.
"Pictsies. The Nac Mac Feegle. The Wee Free Men." she says, ticking the alternative names off on her fingers.
"A very real hazard when excavating in Lancre. So what do we know of them?"
Araminta Tockley raises a hand. Alice nods at her.
"The basic social unit is the Clan, miss. Each clan colonises a barrow and customizes it to its needs. The heart of the barrow is its Kelda, which is like its Queen. There is only ever one ruling Kelda, and all the males in the Clan, there may be up to a thousand of them, are either her sons or her brothers. They live by foraging and fighting, and will take animals either feral or farmed. They will sell their souls, if they had them, for alcohol, which they are only rarely able to get. Wise farmers, like my family, know this and bargain with them. In return for occasional bottles of strong drink, they may be persuaded to take only the old sick animals from a herd, and that by agreement. Their help may also be sought in a hard winter, when bears, wolves and foxes present more than usual danger to people and animals."
"Very good, miss Tockley. But I can't give a merit point, as it's from your own local custom and tradition, and knowing it implies no special virtue. Anyone else?"
Belinda Rhodri-Protheroe raised a hand.
"They're in Llamedos as well, miss" she said. "They tallk differently and they're more elusive, and some of the Families prefer green tribal paint, but they're recognisably the same creature. We call them the tylwth- teg."
"Spell that" Alice requested, chalking. "A Llamedosian word? Its meaning in Morporkian, please?"
"It's vernacular, miss. It means Blloody Nuisance. And they have a sort of llove-hate relationship with Druids. A Druid surveying a site for a new stone circlle must first make a service of dedication and protection, which involves sacrificing a case of whiskey on the site of the high Alltar. By morning, the drink is gone, but the stones are stillll standing, see. If he didn't leave the drink…"
"The stones would be unaccountably thrown down in the night as if by inexplicable occult forces. I get the picture".
"And sometimes if the Druid makes the right sort of bond, they hellp to erect the stones. My father told me the story of a tenant farmer on the estate, see, who got the idea he'd have a bigger field and less plloughing if he took the old mound and levelllled it fflat. You don't do that in Llamedos, miss.."
"Miss Rust! Compose youself!" Alice snapped; Deborah Rust was pretending to put up an imaginary umbrella in Belinda's direction. Her immediate cronies were giggling.
"WHY must peasants from Llamedos spit as much as they talk?" Deborah said, petulantly. Belinda glared at her.
Will this girl live to see her Final Examination! Alice wondered. The way she's going on, she'll be inhumed long before that! And… better for Belinda that she attends extra classes in Elocution and Deportment, and learns to lose the Llamedosian accent that makes her stand out in what is laughably considered to be Polite Society. I'll talk to that frightful snob Mrs. Sanderson-Reeves about that.
"Continue, Miss Rhodri-Protheroe." Alice sounded the gHrr-Rhodd(h)ri part with a perfect Llamedosian trill, glaring at the Rust girl. What a language for spitting in. Almost as bad as Dwarvish.
"Anyway, this farmer ignored the olld stories about interfering with the mound on his l … ground. He went out to l…knock it fl…raze it to the ground. They found him a day later, no clothes on and sitting on his pickaxe, you might say. Handle-first, see. "
"Ouch" said Alice, with sympathy. They only threw me in the river.
"And the mound where the tylyth live is still there, Untouched."
"I can't see what the problem is!" Deborah Rust declared. "On my family estates, my father instructs the gamekeepers to deal with vermin by all means possible! And you can't tell me that these little blue…or green… creatures aren't just another sort of vermin! I bet they take game-birds!"
Alice smiled, without humour.
"And how does your father's estate staff deal with that which it terms vermin, miss Rust?"
"It's ever so easy! I helped with it last hols!"
Yes, I bet you did, you vicious little brat.
"What you do" Deborah was flushed with having the attention of the class, "is to block all but one of the entrances to the burrow. You then have this special apparatus, which cooks the chemicals at one end, in the burner. You then use a bellows to direct the poisonous smoke through a long hose into the burrow and they die. It takes longer for badgers and Daddy absolutely forbids using it on foxes, because of the hunting, but everything dies, even the small vermin like wasps. I experimented with some of the things we were learning about in Poisons last term, and watched the effects, and wrote it up. Mr Mericet gave me a highly commended for my summer essay! I bet those little blue men would all turn a more permanent shade of blue-green if the gassing apparatus was used on their dirty filthy little burrows!"
Alice contained her distaste. I bet Mericet adores her. Still, let me carry on feeding her the rope and see if she hangs herself.
The bell rang for the end of the lesson.
"Do let us all know how you got on, Miss Rust" Alice said, dismissing the class. She tried not to notice the growing grin on Belinda Rhodri-Protheroe's face. "I'm sure we'll all learn a lesson from your attempted inhumation of a Pictsie clan".