Little People by Tom Holt

right page?’
    I snatched the diary back and flicked through. ‘It’s gone,’ I said. ‘Vanished.’
    â€˜Away with the fairies, you mean.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Or are you going to tell me it’s lemon juice or special elven invisible ink?’
    â€˜I thought you said you believed me.’
    â€˜I did. That was before you showed me a page with no writing on it.’ Her eyebrows started to close in, like hungry wolves round a wounded deer. ‘When I said I wanted an imaginative excuse, I didn’t mean something so wildly bizarre that it insults my intelligence.’
    â€˜But it was there,’ I protested. ‘Right there where I was pointing. I saw it.’
    She looked at me sideways. ‘This seeing-things-thataren’t-there aspect of your character’s a new one on me,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m not sure I’m all that happy about it.’
    â€˜But—’ I stopped dead. Have you ever put your foot in some really deep mud, so that it keeps going on down and down without meeting anything solid? The trick is, under such circumstances, not to thrash about and make sudden violent movements, or you really will get stuck. Same goes, in my limited experience, for protesting your innocence to a sceptical female. Keep still, say nothing, wait for someone to pull you out. Which, to her credit, she immediately proceeded to do.
    â€˜Maybe,’ she said, in a vaguely conciliatory tone of voice, ‘you thought you’d seen it because you’ve been so preoccupied lately. And,’ she went on, ‘just because you imagined some elf stuff once, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all the elf stuff’s imaginary.’
    â€˜True,’ I mumbled.
    â€˜Besides,’ she went on, falling in beside me and starting to walk back towards the main building, ‘it doesn’t actually fit in with the rest of what you’ve been telling me about these elves of yours. Like, what you were saying seemed to suggest that they’re somehow being – well, held against their will. Forced to work as gardeners, or whatever. Anyway, they’re localised to your dad’s house, and maybe the immediate vicinity. That’s a hundred miles away.’
    I frowned. ‘How’d you make all that out?’ I asked.
    â€˜Isn’t that what you told me? About the elf that died saying death is a sort of freedom, and it was finally outside the limits? Sounds to me like it’d escaped from – well, from somewhere. And then you said about your stepfather’s garden being so perfect but nobody ever did any work there that you could see. And then you find there’re elves there, with little spades and things; and your stepfather gets so incredibly hostile when he catches you hanging around the garden. Doesn’t it stand to reason that . . .’
    â€˜Jesus.’
    Well, maybe I had thought of it, at least on a subconscious level; but I certainly hadn’t consciously fitted together those particulars pieces. Or hadn’t allowed myself to, more like. Cru, on the other hand, was under no such disability and now she’d actually said it out loud, it wasn’t ever going to go away.
    Pity, that. I’d wanted understanding and moral support, not to have my nose rubbed in an uncomfortable, possibly life-altering hypothesis. A bit like running to Mummy to have a bumped knee kissed better, to find Mummy waiting for you with a chainsaw and saying she’s going to have to amputate.
    Cru just seemed annoyed that I’d interrupted her. ‘Well, doesn’t it?’ she demanded. ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s as obvious as an elephant sandwich. To be honest with you, I can’t really see how you could’ve failed to—’
    Gee , I thought; if she’s the sensitive, tactful one, I must be really crass. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, you’ve given me