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lavender. And the ribbons should have pink and white rosettes.”

CHAPTER 2
    The shape of the country was rectangular, but there was a long wiggling finger of land that struck down southeast and a sort of tapering lump that struck up northwest. The southeast bit was called the Finger; the northwest lump was called the Gig, because it might be guessed to have some resemblance to the shape of a two-wheeled vehicle with its shafts tipped forward to touch the ground. The royal city lay a little north of the Finger, in the southeast corner, nearly a month’s journey, even with frequent changes of horses and a good sprinkling of fairy dust for speed, to the base of the Gig.
    The highways that bound most of the rest of the country together gave out at the beginning of the Gig. The local peer, Lord Prendergast, said, reasonably, that he (or his forebears) would have built a highway if there had ever been any need, but there never had been. Nothing exciting ever happened in the Gig, or at least hadn’t since the invasion of the fire-wyrms about eleven hundred years ago, before the days of highway-building. So if you wanted to go there you went on cart tracks. (The lord’s own travelling carriages were very well sprung, and he would upon occasion send them to fetch his less well equipped, or more easily bruised, friends and associates outside the Gig.)
    And what you needed, muttered the royal herald, bearer of a little pouch of cheat-proof lots (almost empty now) and important tidings about the princess’ name-day, was not swift horses but six-legged flat-footed ponies that could see in thick mist and the green darkness of trees. He had given up riding, after his fancy thoroughbred had put its foot in a gap of root and stumbled, for the umpty-millionth time, and he was now leading it, half an eye anxiously upon it, for he thought it was going a bit lame. He sneezed. Also needed were human beings impervious to cold and damp. The Gig was a damp sort of place, and most of its village names reflected this: Foggy Bottom, Smoke River, Dewglass, Rain-hill, Mistweir. Moonshadow didn’t sound very promising either, although at least it didn’t utterly guarantee wet; and the last village of the Gig, right out next to the wild lands where no one went, was called Treelight. He had thought this was a very funny name when he was setting out from the royal city. It was less funny now, with the leaves overhead dripping down his neck, and he not yet arrived at the first village of this soggy province. He sneezed again.
    To think that Lord Prendergast preferred to live out here and leave his seat at court empty from year’s end to year’s end! There must be some truth in the stories about that family, and the house they lived in, Woodwold, a vast mysterious place, a thousand years old or more, full of tales and echoes of tales, and with some uncanny connection with the people that lived in it. But it was still a grand and beautiful house—grand enough for a highway to have been built to get to it. Except it hadn’t been.
    The herald blinked, distracted. The sun had suddenly cut through the leaf cover and a gold-green shaft of light fell across his path. He looked at the sunbeam, scowling; there was no reason, this far off the highway and with soggy leaf-mould the chief road surface, for there to be so much dust to dance in a sunbeam. The thick dust and moist air would conspire to leave ineradicable chalky smudges on his livery. He sighed again. Maybe Foggy Bottom—which should be the first village he came to—would have a blacksmith who could look at his horse’s foot.
    Foggy Bottom had heard of the princess’ birth as quickly as the rest of the country; one of the village fairies had a particular friend who was a robin whose wife’s cousin’s sister-in-law was closely related to a family of robins that lived in a bush below the queen’s bedroom window, and had heard the princess’ first startled cry. Foggy Bottom was expecting