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wind.
    Well , thought Arianna, you needn’t be nasty! And then in enormous happiness she laughed at herself talking, if silently, to the wind. And it seemed as if the wind laughed as well in a breathy, sobbing sort of way.
    Hello! it suddenly said. Then, disposing of “h’s” for a while it made a definite statement, several in fact, in a clear, unbreathy, female voice.
    “A hag,” it announced, “is not only an ugly old woman much like a witch, it is also a soft place in a moor, or a firm place in a bog. A respite of sorts one way or the other. You are, therefore, lying in a hag-a heathery hag, if you must know-lucky you. And at the right time of year, I might add. One week later! – had you fallen one week later the blossoms, the perfume would be gone. Until next August, of course, which may be sooner than you think.”
    “What?” said Arianna, her voice rising happily. “This is mad.” Single words sighed by the wind she could accept but dictionary definitions were something else altogether. She sprang to her feet, or rather floated, so extraordinarily lighter-than-air did she feel. She whirled ecstatically around in the wind, searching for the source of its voice in much the same way that she had danced, earlier in the day, around and around the room with Jeremy, until she became quite dizzy. Stopping, she used the sight of her balloon for ballast until she had to admit that it was not her balloon at all but rather the full moon which, tonight, had not yet gone down. Turning away from it, but not with disappointment, she was confronted by the pale face and clear blue eyes of a young woman who was almost as thin as herself, but who was dark rather than fair.
    “Nobody knows anything,” continued the woman, for it was she who had defined the hag. “You see that little knoll yonder?”
    Arianna, slightly in shock from her sudden awareness of the woman’s presence, craned her neck to examine the spot to which the woman pointed. And there, at the end of a series of billowing hills was a smaller one-rather regular in formation.
    “That is Hob Hill,” the woman announced, “and you think a hob is a fireplace, don’t you? Something you put your kettle on. Admit it, that’s what you think.”
    Arianna nodded, suspecting that she was wrong.
    “Wrong!” said the woman. “A hob is a little friendly spirit who slips into your kitchen at night when you are sleeping and helps you with your household chores. Sweeps up, mops down, et cetera. Since he is a little person, his hill, his moor, has to be smaller than these” – the woman gestured around her in all directions – “and so there it is. And if you don’t believe me then you are a fool!”
    “I didn’t say I thought it wasn’t true.”
    “You believe it then?”
    Arianna was silent for a moment, thinking. “Yes,” she eventually replied.
    The woman visibly relaxed. “Well, that’s a good thing,” she said to herself, “particularly under the circumstances.”
    “Anyway,” she said to Arianna, “let me continue. These hobs can grow, if you want them to, into almost anything that you want them to be. Then, of course, they start changing their names and demanding more space. Space,” she repeated, looking around her, “then they need a lot more space.”
    Spa-a-a-c-e , roared the wind.
    “They’ll take over anything, everything. I’m sure you know the Celtic rhyme: ‘First he sweeps, then he polishes, then he grows up, and demolishes.’”
    Arianna didn’t, but at the moment felt it safer to remain silent.
    The woman was clearly warming to her subject. “After they grow they’re not so friendly any more. But they still belong to you. Completely. They are all yours. He is allyours.” The woman crossed her arms and looked at Arianna meaningfully. “Then, of course, he is a demon – utterly horrifying-but infinitely more interesting, I’m sure you’ll agree, than a little elf with a broom in his hand.
    “The question is,” the