Diana Wynne Jones’s Magic and Myths Collection. Diana Wynne Jones

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 you stop romancing this instant, Hayley! Uncle Jolyon’s here. He wants to see you for tea in the parlour. If it wasn’t for that, I’d send you to bed without supper for telling stories. Go and comb your hair and put on a clean dress this moment. I want you back downstairs and looking respectable in ten minutes! So hurry!”

      Hayley sobered up. She saw she had been stupid to mention Flute to Grandma. Flute was – if ever anyone was – a person who overflowed Grandma’s boundaries. Flute didn’t do walls. And Grandma did walls all the time, Hayley thought as she scurried away down the passage to the stairs. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard Grandpa and Uncle Jolyon coming out of the map room, arguing. It was funny, she thought, peeping over the banisters, the way unusual things always seemed to happen in clusters. Uncle Jolyon only visited here about once a year and when he did, Grandpa was always very, very polite to him. But now Grandpa was shouting at him.

      “You just watch yourself!” Grandpa bellowed. “Any more of this control-freak nonsense and I shall walk away! Then where will you be?”

      As Hayley scudded on upwards, Uncle Jolyon was making peace-keeping sort of noises. She took another peep at them on the next turn of the stairs. They were both big, stout men, but where Grandpa was grey, Uncle Jolyon had a fine head of curly white hair and a white beard and moustache to go with it. He backed away as Grandpa positively roared, “Oh yes, I can do it! I did it before and you didn’t like it one bit, did you?”

      “Hayley!” Grandma called. “Are you changed yet?”

      Hayley called out, “Nearly, Grandma!” and pelted on up to her room. There she flung off her grubby dress, flung on a new one and managed to make her hair lie flat by pasting it down with the water she scrubbed her muddy knees in. Then she went demurely down to the parlour, where Grandma was pouring tea and Grandpa and Uncle Jolyon were drinking it, all smiles, as if neither of them had just been quarrelling in the hall.

      Nobody took much notice of Hayley. She sat on an embroidered chair nibbling at a hard rock cake – which made her feel like a rather small squirrel – and listened to the three adults talk about world affairs, and science, and the stock market, and some prehistoric carvings someone had found in a cave near Nottingham. If Uncle Jolyon had specially wanted to see Hayley, he showed few signs of it. He only looked at her once. Hayley was struck then at how dishonest the crinkles round his eyes made him look. She thought it must be because she had just seen Flute. Flute’s green eyes looked at you direct and straight, without any disguising of his feelings. Uncle Jolyon’s eyes calculated and concealed things. Hayley found she distrusted him very much.

      When the tea was drunk, Uncle Jolyon leaned over, grunting a little, and pinched Hayley’s chin. “You be a good girl now,” he said to her, “and do what your grandparents say.”

      The way he smiled, full of false kindness and hidden meanings, truly grated on Hayley. And the pinch hurt. “Why are you so dishonest?” she said.

      Grandma went stiff as a post. Grandpa seemed to curl up a little, as if he expected someone to hit him. Uncle Jolyon, however, leant his head back and laughed heartily.

      “Because I have to be,” he said. “Nobody expects a businessman to be honest, child.” And he shouted with laughter again.

      Uncle Jolyon went away after that – with Grandpa seeing him into his waiting taxi in the friendliest possible way – and Hayley was left to face Grandma’s anger.

      “How dare you be so rude to poor Uncle Jolyon!” she said. “Go up to your room and stay there! I don’t want to set eyes on you until you’ve remembered how to behave properly.”

      Hayley was quite glad to go. She wanted to be alone to digest all the things she had seen that afternoon. But she could not resist turning round halfway upstairs. “Uncle Jolyon isn’t poor,” she said. “And he orders Grandpa around.”

      “Go!” Grandma commanded, pointing a strong finger upstairs.

      Hayley went. She went into her room and sat there for a long time, staring at the photo of her parents on the mantelpiece. So happy. That was what Hayley had expected the mythosphere to be like, full of happiness, but it seemed to be full of tragic things instead.

      After a while, though, it occurred to her that in a way it was full of happiness. The hunter in the leopardskin had been happy, until he saw the ladies and turned all mean. The ladies who turned into swans had been happy as they ran down to the water. And that boy with the dogs had been happiest of all until he was stupid enough to annoy a goddess.

      “It’s silly to let the bad things come out on top!” Hayley said aloud. “The good, happy things are just as important. They just don’t seem to last. You want to catch them at their best and keep them if you can.”

      She looked hard at the photo and wished she had another photo to put