and throw it away. The loveliness of those painted eyes and lips still had the power to make the Floralinda of old feel calm, and so too did Cobweb’s, especially if you ignored everything coming out of the lips.
And it was easy now. When Floralinda came to the fishmen on flight twenty-eight—awful, squat little people, with troutlike heads and real gills, gibbering and bubbling—she simply stabbed at them in the doorway, knowing the doorway was the best place to be, because as she explained to Cobweb later, that meant they all had to come at her one at a time, and could pile up and die.
And Cobweb looked at her again.
The Kelpie was honestly very unthreatening, and Floralinda was not sure what the witch had been thinking. The will-o-wisps were more of a problem. Will-o-wisps don’t have any real bodies, but are malign lights that can burn you with a sort of fox-fire. Even this fox-fire is not their real weapon, for they are mostly at their best when they can drown you in a bog or swamp. Will-o-wisps have no hunger, and no blood to be poisoned with; but thankfully Cobweb had a quick talk in fairy language to them, and Floralinda led the group to an upstairs window, whereupon they flew out.
Cobweb sighed in envy.
“What did you tell them, dear?” said Floralinda.
“Oh, I said there was a swamp nearby, and that this wouldn’t get them in trouble with their union,” said Cobweb carelessly, “but I lied on both counts; I’m sure there’s not a swamp nearby, and they’ll die in the forest.”
Floralinda thought this was a bit cruel.
“If I cannot get away,” said the fairy, “I see no reason why some coarse will-o’-the-wisps ought to.”
“You are not very nice, Cobweb,” said Floralinda.
And Cobweb said:
“Fancy you saying that!”
Another snow came, and banked up on the window-sill. There were no more little birds, but quite a lot of fish stashed away, which had dried (or mostly dried) thanks to Cobweb’s efforts. It was dreadfully chewy, and tasted fishy in a way that was less like potted shrimps and more like the bottom of a filtration pond, but Floralinda was glad of the meat. She was quite hungry at this stage, what with it growing colder all the time, and with having to exercise so much. Her foot only throbbed occasionally, and she liked to run up and down the stairs of the flights, to get warm. She welcomed the saw-toothed crane, which she ended up roasting on the hearth fire as a replacement for a holiday turkey. She and Cobweb sat by the fire and warmed themselves, toasting orange segments on sticks.
The moment Cobweb saw the siren on flight twenty-five, though, she made Floralinda shut the door, and run back upstairs as quick as she could, which was quite quick now; her sprained ankle complained only a little.
“That is a siren,” said Cobweb. “Your witch was getting quite avant-garde. See here, we’ll have to plug our ears with pith to make ourselves deaf, or we’ll hear it singing.”
Floralinda wanted to know what would happen after that.
“I’m not actually sure; but something dreadful,” said Cobweb, who had not read her Odyssey.
So they stopped up their ears with pith, and Floralinda was obliged to keep Cobweb in the warm neck ruffle of the rat-skin coat; she could not say “Thrust” or “Duck”, but had promised to pull Floralinda’s hair for “Thrust”, and to poke her in the neck for “Duck”, and had looked quite pleased over the possibility. Floralinda opened the door to the flight where the siren was sitting, and found she didn’t quite know how to proceed, because the siren didn’t try to attack her, or any such other thing.
The siren looked like a beautiful lady from the waist up, and like a seafood platter from the waist down; she had long green hair and blue teeth and eyes like a shark’s, with nice diamond pupils. She was sitting on a sort of raised dais and had no weapons or anything else of that kind, just a comb that she had been using on her long hair. She had good hands for strangling, but she cringed back at the sight of Floralinda’s coat, and shuddered at the point of Floralinda’s spear. It was the first time anything on the flights had been afraid of her.
She opened her mouth and sang, but of course to Floralinda and Cobweb it just sounded like underwater noise, like other people speaking when you have