Little People by Tom Holt Page A

something to think about, and no mistake.’
    â€˜Oh, there’s more,’ she assured me. ‘For a start—’
    â€˜Yes,’ I interrupted. ‘Thank you. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll try and get my head round this lot first. Shouldn’t take more than the rest of my life.’
    â€˜I thought you’d be pleased that someone else believed you,’ she said, sounding all hurt and spurned. ‘Damn it, I was only taking an interest.’
    . . . As the dragon said to the oil refinery. ‘I know,’ I said quickly, ‘and I’m really grateful, truly I am. You’ve no idea how much it means to me. But I’d like to think about this on my own for a bit, if that’s OK with you. No offence.’
    â€˜Please yourself, then,’ she replied, sniffing fiercely. ‘Let me know when you’re through moping.’
    I assured her that I’d do just that, and she flounced off towards the main building. I know modern women aren’t supposed to flounce, but she must’ve been born with the knack; besides I think it’s nice that somebody’s keeping these ancient skills and crafts alive for future generations.
    Well, it was one of those instances where the more you think about it, the more bewildering it gets. On the one hand, if she was right, it’d explain a whole raft of funny little things going right back to when I was just a little kid. On the other hand, if she was right, I was living under the same roof as a man who enslaved elves to dig his vegetable garden. Rather a lot of trouble to go to for a few scrawny little carrots and a meagre picking of Kevlar-reinforced runner beans. Besides, Daddy George didn’t even like vegetables.
    Since it was the only explanation I’d considered so far, it was simultaneously the most convincing and the daffiest. I tried to think of an alternative. I failed.
    When you can’t solve the whole problem, my aunt Sheila once told me, nibble off the simplest bit of it and try solving that; it probably won’t get you anywhere much, but at least you won’t feel such a total dead loss. So I thought about the diary and the disappearing writing, and had a shot at making sense of that. It was getting chilly outside, so I trudged back indoors and found a relatively secluded corner of the study area that I shared with a bunch of other guys. Then I pulled out the diary and ruffled through the pages.
    It was back.
    Damn it to hell, there it was again: four letters, tiny but unmistakably there. I scrabbled my way through the rest of the diary and, sure enough, all the other messages were there too, just where I’d seen them before.
    Not funny , I thought.
    Oh, there were rational explanations available, if I’d wanted them; some kind of chemical that was only visible under artificial light, or a compound that stayed inert unless gently warmed through by my body heat, permeating off my leg into my trouser pocket. There was also self-hypnosis, shared delusion, or the slender chance that some humorist had spiced the lunchtime roly-poly pudding with a generous dose of bad LSD. Those, however, weren’t the sort of explanations I was looking for, thanks all the same. I was more concerned with Why me? and What did I do to deserve that? and sundry related issues. You see, I’d already guessed the real reason. The message had been for my eyes only. Trying to share it with anybody – anybody at all – just wasn’t allowed.
    If so, that was going to be something of a hardship. What I wanted most of all, of course, was for the whole wretched business to go away; failing that, my second choice was for someone else to come along and take it off me, while I tiptoed away and snuffled round the trashcans looking for a life. The burden being mine and mine alone was something I could really do without, what with one thing and another. After all, I wasn’t particularly interested