not seem smaller to me, now that I was myself older and larger.
The scene, as you remember, is set outside the inn with the sign of the Skull and Trumpet. There were the brawling mice and rats in the foreground, and — yes! — the Puritan moles in steeple hats are peering out of a diamond-leaded casement on the first floor to the right of the inn sign. There are windows to the left, but these are not open. And yet — this is something I cannot remember seeing before — there is something behind those windows, and it is not another rodent.
It is the pale head-and-shoulders of a boy in a white flannel shirt, a boy no more than six inches high. I cannot see him too clearly through the little leaded panes of glass, but I think I know him.
I swear that the head moved and turned its black eyes upon me.
They tell me of course this is rubbish, and I want to believe them.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Witch's Headstone
There was a witch buried at the edge of the graveyard, it was common knowledge. Bod had been told to keep away from that corner of the world by Mrs Owens as far back as he could remember.
'Why?' he asked.
'T'aint healthy for a living body,' said Mrs Owens. 'There's damp down that end of things. It's practically a marsh. You'll catch your death.'
Mr Owens himself was more evasive and less imaginative. 'It's not a good place,' was all he said.
The graveyard proper ended at the edge of the hill, beneath the old apple tree, with a fence of rust-brown iron railings, each topped with a small, rusting spear-head, but there was a wasteland beyond that, a mass of nettles and weeds, of brambles and autumnal rubbish, and Bod, who was a good boy, on the whole, and obedient, did not push between the railings, but he went down there and looked through. He knew he wasn't being told the whole story, and it irritated him.
Bod went back up the hill, to the abandoned church in the middle of the graveyard, and he waited until it got dark. As twilight edged from grey to purple there was a noise in the spire, like a fluttering of heavy velvet, and Silas left his resting-place in the belfry and clambered headfirst down the spire.
'What's in the far corner of the graveyard,' asked Bod. 'Past Harrison Westwood, Baker of this Parish, and his wives Marion and Joan?'
'Why do you ask?' said his guardian, brushing the dust from his black suit with ivory fingers.
Bod shrugged. 'Just wondered.'
'It's unconsecrated ground,' said Silas. 'Do you know what that means?'
'Not really,' said Bod.
Silas walked across the path without disturbing a fallen leaf, and sat down on the stone bench, beside Bod. 'There are those,' he said, in his silken voice, 'who believe that all land is sacred. That it is sacred before we come to it, and sacred after. But here, in your land, they bless the churches and the ground they set aside to bury people in, to make it holy. But they leave land unconsecrated beside the sacred ground, Potters Fields to bury the criminals and the suicides or those who were not of the faith.'
'So the people buried in the ground on the other side of the fence are bad people?'
Silas raised one perfect eyebrow. 'Mm? Oh, not at all. Let's see, it's been a while since I've been down that way. But I don't remember anyone particularly evil. Remember, in days gone by you could be hanged for stealing a shilling. And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.'
'They kill themselves, you mean?' said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid.
'Indeed.'
'Does it work? Are they happier dead?'
Silas grinned so wide and sudden that he showed his fangs. 'Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.'
'Sort of,' said Bod.
Silas reached down and ruffled the boy's hair.
Bod said, 'What about the witch?'
'Yes. Exactly,' said Silas. 'Suicides, criminals and witches. Those who died unshriven.' He stood up, a midnight shadow in the twilight. 'All this talking,' he said, 'and I have not even had my breakfast. While you will be late for lessons.' In the twilight of the graveyard there was a silent implosion, a flutter of velvet darkness, and Silas was gone.
The moon had begun to rise by the time Bod reached Mr Pennyworth's mausoleum, and Thomes Pennyworth (HERE HE LYES IN THE CERTAINTY OF THE MOFT GLORIOUS REFUR-RECTION) was already waiting, and was not in the best of moods.
'You are late,' he said.
'Sorry, Mr Pennyworth.'
Pennyworth tutted. The previous week Mr Pennyworth had been teaching Bod about Elements and Humours, and Bod had kept forgetting which was which. He was expecting a test but instead Mr Pennyworth said, 'I think it is time to spend a few days on practical matters. Time is passing, after all.'
'Is it?' asked Bod.
'I am afraid so, young Master Owens. Now, how is your Fading?'
Bod had hoped he would not be asked that question.
'It's all right,' he said. 'I mean. You know.'
'No, Master Owens. I do not know. Why do you not demonstrate for me?'
Bod's heart sank. He took a deep breath, and did his best, squinching up his eyes and trying to fade away.
Mr Pennyworth was not impressed.
'Pah. That' s not the kind of thing. Not the kind of thing at all. Slipping and fading, boy, the way of the dead. Slip through shadows. Fade from awareness. Try again.'
Bod tried harder.
'You're as plain as the nose on your face,' said Mr Pennyworth. 'And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody.'
Bod tried again. He closed his eyes and imagined himself fading into the stained stonework of the mausoleum wall, becoming a shadow on the night and nothing more. He sneezed.
'Dreadful,' said Mr Pennyworth, with a sigh. 'Quite dreadful. I believe I shall have a word with your guardian about this.' He shook his head. 'So. The humours. List them.'
'Um. Sanguine. Choleric. Phlegmatic. And the other one. Um, Melancholic, I think.'
And so it went, until it was time for Grammar and Composition with Miss Letitia Borrows, Spinster of this Parish (WHO DID NO HARM TO NO MAN ALL THE DAIS OF HER LIFE. READER, CAN YOU SAY LYKEWISE?). Bod liked Miss Borrows, and the cosiness of her little crypt, and that she could all-too-easily be led off the subject.
'They say there's a witch in uncons- unconsecrated ground,' he said.
'Yes, dear. But you don't want to go over there.'
'Why not?'
Miss Borrows smiled the guileless smile of the dead. 'They aren't our sort of people,' she said.
'But it is the graveyard, isn't it? I mean, I'm allowed to go there if I want to?'
'That,' said Miss Borrows, 'would not be advisable.'
