Whirligig

Chapter 3

3

Lenya showed she understood by crying out excitedly: “I know just the place! Come on!”

The delicate pixy ran ahead, laughter tinkling, leading them along a valley until they came to a hillside. It was lined with a patchwork of collapsing stone walls. Lenya turned and grinned at Emily and Lar, who exchanged knowing looks. Only Adam looked puzzled and cross at being left out. The old pixy noticed the boy’s frown, so he began to explain patiently: “They are pixy fields from the Old Days, Master, from a time before the Hag ruled. There’s no farming or honest work done in this land now. It’s cursed.” A look of great sadness passed over Lar’s face. He sighed. Then, curling his lip, just as before, he added: “This field will be perfect. There’s a tuft of grass in the gateway.”

Emily took over the explanation so that Adam’s face brightened. The pixies were more cheerful, too, and their mood seemed to lighten the gloomy surroundings.

Lar chose five of the older pixies to go with Adam and another five to stay with him. The rest followed Emily to a safe hiding place.

Lar and his five pixies joined hands and danced in a circle around the tuft of grass in the gateway. The words they chanted were strange and made Adam think of years ago as an infant when all the world was a mystery. Satisfied, Lar and the others gathered stones to narrow the gateway until the opening contained only the tuft that they had danced around. Nobody could enter the field without stepping on it. Their work finished, Lar and his companions joined Emily’s group in hiding. Instead, Adam and his pixies waited in the open field for the spriggans to come. They took up position on the other side of the wall opposite the enchanted gateway.

Time passed while they exchanged tales about their different lands. Adam’s first discovery was that all pixy names begin with ‘L’ and are easy to say. They sounded sweet in his new tongue: Lex, Lygg, Loy, Lajx and Lupp. Sleepy-eyed Loy, under his strange, pointed hat, explained how he had fallen into the Hag’s clutches.

He had been unlucky when freshly cured of Rainbow Sickness. The complicated cure left him weak and unable to work, vulnerable to the Hag’s spell.

“What’s Rainbow Sickness?” Adam asked.

The pixies looked at each other, and their mocking laughter made him more curious. Loy began: “It was my own fault. I saw a rainbow and it was so pretty. You must never point at a rainbow with your first finger. I forgot and that’s how I got ill.”

“What’s the illness like?”

“First of all, your skin turns pink…like yours! That’s why we laughed just now!” Adam looked about him at the five grinning, greenish faces and smiled too. “Worse,” Loy continued, “you lose all your energy and spend all your time looking at waterfalls and fountains.”

“How do you cure it?”

“Wait until the Moon wanes, because the illness has to slip away from you. Get you to a stream when the sun is half-set. Wade into the stream, holding a gold object in one hand and a silver one in the other. Bend forward with your fists just in the water. Then the healer asks you a question. What have you got in your hands? she says. Gold, silver and water, you reply. Then the healer commands, Go away to the sea, Rainbow Sickness! and she says some magic words, which only healers know. For the next three mornings, the healer takes you under some arches, when the sun’s half-risen…and this is the worst part, she makes you drink three silver spoonfuls of a horrible concoction. Bleah!”

“What?”

“It’s a mixture of twitch grass and saltpetre,” Loy shuddered at the memory.

“And did it cure you?”

“The cure always works,” Loy said firmly. “On the third morning, I turned back from sickly pink to this healthy green colour.”

Adam smiled.

“But I didn’t have chance to get my strength back,” he added, “when the Hag’s spell latched on to me—that’s how I left Halewood for the Land of Poverty.”

“Listen!” Lex interrupted; his head c****d to one side. Lygg spoke for the first time in a calm, low voice: “They’re coming!”

“The spriggans?” Adam asked. He couldn’t hear a thing.

Instead, he saw them first, in the distance, before the sound of chanting and of pounding feet reached him. Standing up, he clutched Cari in his pocket. In some way, the orb comforted him with its presence. Even so, he felt very tense, but the pixy faces were even tenser.

“You’d better stand up and be seen,” he said grimly.

The spriggan force advanced at a trot, but when their leader saw Adam, he halted the column. There were about forty of them. They weren’t taller than pixies; however, their ugliness was revolting. They wore no clothes, revealing their leathery bodies covered in rough brown hair. Their eyes were horrible. Even though the small, enchanted field lay between Adam’s band and the spriggans, those black-slatted, grey eyes still chilled his heart. They spanned the short distance in a blaze of cruelty and hatred. Adam could sense terror hammering in the pixy hearts at his side and understood what fear the evil nature of these creatures induced. He shuddered as the spriggan chief’s eyes passed over him from head to foot.

Adam saw the malign creature sneer and his long-nailed fingers close around his sling. Even so, he wasn’t ready for such speed of arm. Before he could move, a stone struck him viciously under the right eye. It burnt horribly and left a painful mark on his face.

“Quick, run!” Adam shouted urgently, shaking the tears from his eyes with a toss of his head, relieved that he hadn’t lost an eye. As they turned, fiery stones hailed down, burning their shoulders and backs, and the strange battle cry of the spriggans rang in their ears: Pruk, pruk, pruk! It sounded like some kind of horrible croak.

Everything went to plan as the spriggans sprang forward in pursuit. They were forced to enter the field through the narrow gateway prepared for them. So, their clawed feet trampled the tuft of grass as they squeezed through one at a time. Once inside the field, they began to run about most oddly. First, they ran in a column to the middle of the field where they stopped, looking around in confusion. Then they ran aimlessly again. This sequence of actions was repeated many times.

“It’s working!” Emily cried joyfully as she led the main band of pixies to re-join Adam’s group. “They’re well and truly pixy-led!”

“Of course,” Lar smiled. “Where Nature fails, art obtains, is it not so, Master?”

“Ay,” Adam nodded doubtfully because he didn’t really understand.

“Quick, look!” Lupp cried, jumping up and down with excitement.

The spriggans were beginning to argue among themselves. Every time they rushed forward, the illusion of a way out changed position. Since spriggans are too spiteful to put up with frustration for long, they began screaming, pulling hair, scratching and biting among themselves. Before long, burning stones were flying, causing their screams to become more piercing and pain-filled.

“Serves them right!” Emily laughed. “Let’s go!”

“But won’t they know how to break the spell?” Adam asked anxiously, touching his face tenderly where it still hurt.

“They might know if it comes to that,” Lex chuckled, “but they can’t do anything about it! The way to break the spell is to turn your coat inside-out and, as you can see, they don’t wear coats. They will be there until the Hag chooses to release them.”

“Why did they make that strange croaking noise?” Adam asked. It had made an impression on him.

“When they go into battle,” Lex explained, “they imitate the raven call, pruk, pruk, because the raven is the bird of death and a favourite of the Hag.”

Adam was silent. He didn’t feel like asking any more questions.