brown and almost empty of leaves. A young lady in a white dress came down the bank towards the shore. When she was right beside the water, she looked around, grinning mischievously, and crouched down. Her white dress melted into her all over and she was suddenly a swan. Off she launched, white and stately, and sailed across the lake.
Hayley saw a hunter then. She thought he was not the same hunter as the first one, but it was hard to be sure. He was in dark clothes, but he had the same sort of huge bow and a case of arrows. He was coming stealthily down to the lakeside with an arrow ready beside his bow. When he saw the swan lady, he put the arrow in the bow, raised it and, very slowly and carefully, drew the arrow back until the bow was a great arc.
Hayley cried out, “Oh no! Don’t!”
The hunter did not seem to hear her. He let the arrow fly. Out in the lake, the swan collapsed into a white, spouting turmoil.
“Let’s move on,” Flute said sadly. He took Hayley’s hand and pulled her away from the lakeside. But before the bushes hid the lake, Hayley had to look back. She saw the hunter wading in the water, dragging the white floppy shape of the lady to the shore. He seemed to be crying his eyes out.
The next part they went through had swans in it everywhere. Three swans with crowns on their heads glided on a sudden sea. A group of young women ran down to the beach a bit further on and then took off as swans in a white beating of huge wings. More wings beat and some swans came in to land beside a big bonfire. As they landed, they turned into young men. This happened several times. Sometimes there was just one swan, sometimes a whole flock. Then Flute and Hayley arrived at a place where a young woman timidly held out her hand to a huge swan, as big as she was. There was something about that big swan that Hayley did not like at all.
“I think,” Flute said, “that we’ll take another strand now. All right?” When Hayley nodded, he turned off along a way that was greener, where the sun shone among forest trees that seemed to be putting out new spring leaves.
They passed through a sunny clearing where golden midges circled under a big oak tree. When Hayley looked at the midges closely, they were very small winged people. She cried out with pleasure.
“More like it, eh?” Flute said, grinning.
The midge people all flew away as he said it. They seemed to have been frightened by a growing noise, over to the left. It was a sound of yelping, pattering and panting. Shortly a whole crowd of dogs burst into the clearing, excited, long-legged hunting dogs with their tongues hanging out. Hayley could see that they were all little more than puppies. They saw Hayley and Flute and rushed towards them, so that in seconds they were surrounded by curved, waving tails, big floppy ears and wide panting mouths with long pink tongues draping out of them. One puppy reared up to put both paws on Flute’s stomach. Flute laughed and rubbed its ears. Hayley, a little timidly, stroked the head of the nearest hound. This caused all the rest to clamour for attention too. Hayley had to laugh. It was like being in a warm, boisterous bath, full of excitement and affection.
A boy came panting into the clearing, trailing a long whip. He stopped and laughed when he saw them surrounded in happy dogs. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to teach them to follow a scent. You wouldn’t believe how easily they get distracted!” He was a good looking boy, not much older than Hayley, and he seemed as happy and excited as his dogs. He cracked his whip in the air. “Down, Chaser! Come on, Snuffer! Bell and Doom, get away, get on!” He cracked his whip again. Hayley saw that he was careful not to hit any of the dogs. “Come on, all of you!” he shouted.
It took a while, and a lot more shouting and whip cracking, but at length the dogs turned away from these interesting new humans they had found. One or two put noses to the ground. One gave an excited yelp. And finally they all rushed away into the forest with the boy running and bounding behind them.
“Oh, I liked him!” Hayley said. “Who is he?”
“Another huntsman,” Flute said. “One of many. We’re on the hunters’ strand here. But I think we ought to be getting back now. I’ve got a busy afternoon and I suspect that your grandmother will be wanting you by now.” He strode off through the sunlit forest in the same direction that the boy and his dogs had gone.
Hayley said, “Bother!” as she trudged after him. The midge people had come back again to circle in the sun and she had wanted to watch them.
Just as she caught up with Flute, the boy came racing back towards them. He was older now, with a little curl of beard on his chin, and he ran as if he was running for his life. If he noticed Flute or Hayley as he tore past them, he gave no sign of it. His eyes were set with terror and he just ran. Behind him came all the dogs, older too now, and a bit gaunt and grizzled. They were all snarling. One or two had foam coming from their mouths and all their eyes glared. As the boy crashed past Flute and Hayley the foremost dog almost caught him and then lost ground because it had a bloodstained piece of the boy’s trousers in its mouth. The rest chased on furiously.
Hayley clutched Flute’s hand. “Do they catch him?”
Flute nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Hayley was horrified. “Why?”
“He managed to be really offensive to a goddess,” Flute told her. “Things like this happen on every strand, you know. The mythosphere is not an entirely happy place.”
“But it looks so beautiful!” Hayley protested.
Flute laughed a little. “Beauty isn’t made of sugar,” he said. “Through this way now.”
They pushed their way through some thick laurels and came out into the common again. Hayley stared from the bushes behind to her to the still impossible sight of her grandparents’ house beyond the road, over there.
Flute said, “Do you think you can find your own way back, or do you want me to take you?”
“I’d rather stay with you,” Hayley said. She felt raw with sorrow over the fate of the nice boy.
“Not possible, I’m afraid,” Flute said. “But I’ll show you some more magic quite soon if you like. See you.” He plunged back among the laurels and was gone.
Definitely gone, Hayley knew. She stood and wondered what Grandma might say if Hayley simply went across the road and rang the doorbell, and Grandma opened the door. It hardly bore thinking of. No, she had to get back to the garden somehow.
She pushed her way dubiously in among the laurels. And pushed and rustled and plunged and rattled, and for a while wondered if she was going to have to just stand there and yell for help, or even stay in the bushes for ever. Then she was quite suddenly through them and into the garden, almost treading on her rock garden. She was about to kick it moodily to bits – it was only a heap of stones with wilting ferns stuck in it, and that nice boy was being ripped apart by his own dogs – when she heard Grandma calling her. At which Hayley forgot that she was not supposed to run and rushed frantically up the path to the garden door.
“I think Flute is an ancient supernatural being,” she panted unwisely to Grandma.
“Oh, just look at you!” Grandma exclaimed. “How did you get so untidy?”
“In the bushes. Flute is just what I call him because I don’t know his real name,” Hayley babbled. “He has a green scarf and hair like Martya’s.”
Grandma stiffened. “Will
