—Aye, but not just face down in the mud, was I? I was singing too! As when I tripped on the bulrushes I was halfway along a song I just made up, called "Spig as the Coconuts." It's about my balls. I was falling, and a whole new verse came to me, and I'm superstitious like that. If I don't start singing the thing straight up it'll zip right through my head and into my non-cerebral receptacles. So you were spot on, I was singing face down in the mud, I was going—
Here I yam ah tremolo
Legs they go akimbolo
How pig are my hairy nuts
They spig as the coconuts
—which was the best verse so far. You have to sing it very deep, right down in your belly like that. Have you a towel? Oh thanks. It's mucky out in the fens.
—I watched you. You were a black shape in the soot of dusk, hiding the gleams of all my lords and ladies.
—The little shiners? Don't they dance a merry lantern dance when night drops. You'dn't think the boglands were a place of high carousing, but they met my mood. Some of 'em even sang along, I reckon. Here, I picked a bunch — but they've fallen dark.
—Yes, haven't they? They don't like to be picked. I expect they'll have their revenge, in the way the high folk do.
—How's that?
—How? You know the nature of nobles. They appoint a servant to it.
—That's true. Tell me something, madam. One moment I was skipping the puddles, an eye on the moon her majesty, singing about my anatomy, picking bright little bog flowers, when the rushes arrested me and pulled me down, mid-verse mind, and my face went splash and splatter. And now I sit here at a bright hearth, with a rag to mop my brow, and a pretty face to look upon. Ain't you a fenwitch? You're handsome for a witch, I didn't know the devil ever made your kind so pleasant to look upon. I had always thought you were buck-toothed and warty-like, but the sense of it is sound. Tell me still, what happened here? What reversed my muddy fortunes, say?
—I can't speak for your fortunes. You rode here, lashed to the back of my great cat. You're in the deepest fastnesses of the Carr, where men don't make it alone.
—So you built this hut all yourself then? It's well-made and solid. Tell me again, if I can ask another question, no no I will. How can your feet be so pale and clean, if I had your moggy for a steed, and we've come this far into the bog? Not even your hem is speckled with it.
—I took the wind. And you know that, and you asked it just to have me say it. But that's enough. Now I will ask you a question.
—Go on! You want me to sing another verse?
—No. I want to know what I should turn you into.
—That's the question? Oh, well, don't trouble yourself, I'm quite content being a lighterman.
—I've no doubt. But my lords and ladies won't have it.
—Hm. Well then. I don't suppose you can you turn me into something that enjoys an ale and has giant testicles?
—Such as?
—A man about my height, or maybe a fraction taller, flaxen hair, blue... No, right. Well, say, a good-natured hairy hog perhaps? A—
...
—SPIIIG.
—Yes. But I won't have a hog in the hut. Outside, Coconuts.
This is a way we've never met. It joins other ways, like in the gutter, by testicles, and tapping on your window, by mud.