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robber took too much they would fly in his face, burn his skin and hair, and wouldn’t let him go until he was writhing in pain at the foot of their tree.
    But Dustfinger was never greedy enough to annoy them. He took only a tiny piece of honeycomb from the nest, scarcely larger than his thumbnail. That was all he needed for now. He went on humming quietly as he wrapped the honey in some leaves.
    The fire-elves woke as soon as he stopped humming. They whirred around him faster and faster, while their voices rose to a sound like bumblebees buzzing angrily. However, they did not attack him. You had to ignore them, act as if you hadn’t even seen them as you turned and walked away at your leisure, slowly, very slowly. They went on whirling in the air around Dustfinger for some time, but in the end they fell behind him, and he followed the small stream that flowed out of the 21
     
    water-nymphs’ pool and wound slowly away through willows, reeds, and alders.
    He knew where the stream would take him: out of the Wayless Wood, where you hardly ever met another soul of your own kind, and then on northward, to places where the forest belonged to human beings, and its timber fell to their axes so fast that most trees died before their canopies could offer shelter to so much as a single horseman. The stream would lead him through the valley as it slowly opened out, past hills where no man had ever set foot because they were full of giants and bears and creatures that had never been given a name. At some point the first charcoal-burners’ huts would appear on the slopes, Dustfinger would see the first patch of bare earth among the dense green, and then he would be reunited not just with fairies and water-nymphs but, he hoped, with some of those human beings he had missed for so long.
    He moved into cover when a sleepy wolf appeared between two trees in the distance and waited, motionless, until its gray muzzle had disappeared. Yes, bears and wolves – he must learn to listen for their steps again, to sense their presence nearby before they saw him – not forgetting the big wildcats, dappled like tree trunks in the sunlight, and the snakes as green as the foliage where they liked to hide. They would let themselves down from the branches with less sound than his hand would make brushing a leaf off his shoulder. Luckily, the giants generally stayed in their hills, where not even he dared go. Only in winter did they sometimes come down. But there were other creatures, too, beings less gentle than the water-nymphs, and they couldn’t be lulled by humming as the fire-elves could. They were usually invisible, well hidden among timber and green leaves, but they were no less dangerous for that: Tree-Men, Trows, Black Bogles, NightMares .. some of them even ventured as far as the charcoal-burners’
    huts.
    “Take a little more care!” Dustfinger whispered to himself. “You don’t want your first day home to be your last.” The sheer intoxication of being back gradually died down, allowing him to think more clearly again. But the happiness remained in his heart, soft and warm like a young bird’s downy plumage.
    He took off his clothes beside a stream and washed the water-nymphs’ slimy deposit off his body, together with the fire-elves’ soot and the grime of the other world. Then he put on the clothes he hadn’t worn for ten years. He had looked after them carefully, but there were a few moth holes in the black fabric all the same, and the sleeves had already been threadbare when he first took them off in that other world. These garments were all red and black, the colors worn by fire-eaters, just as tightrope-walkers clothed themselves in the blue of the sky. He stroked the rough material, put on the full-sleeved doublet, and threw the dark cloak over his shoulders. Luckily, everything still fitted; getting new clothes made was an expensive business, even if you just took your old clothes to the tailor to be patched up again, as