In Scotland

Recalcitrant Golliwogg (Part 18)

They sat in silence after that, wallowing in the bagpipe music, and watched Zeb bleed in his unconscious state.

Twice they had to change his bandage. Natty ripped off the cleanest part of her white coat, which was splattered with dirt once. Matt, however, refused to give up any bit of his denim overalls. Instead, he set up a headlight had out of the small amount of leftover fairy dust Shenanigan had found.

Sighing, Shenanigan neatly ripped off another piece of her kilt. She now knew that a long kilt is quite handy. She crawled back to Zeb, adjusted the headlight that was set up by Matt earlier and peeled off the blood-stained bandages-sans-tartan, which in a few parts looked like beetroot juice. Neatly winding the cloth around his leg, she tied a firm knot to tighten the bandage.

Matt, who had been eyeing the detector for a while, realised that they were nearing the tree. He swiftly jumped up, almost tripped, and ran to land the raft.

Landing the raft as smooth as possible, which in all honesty still involved a few bumps and thumps, Matt landed just a few feet short of a bush.

The three took their miniature torches (also magicked up each using a barely visible amount of fairy dust) and clambered off hurriedly, dashing towards the tree. Suddenly, Shenanigan halted. "Hey, I'll have to look after Zeb. If it's the hideout, you come and tell me."

Natty was a little reluctant to leave Shenanigan nearly defence-less with an unconscious Zeb, which rendered her even more defenseless, and a very attractive light. However, Matt had already left, and who knew what there would be in the tree? Slightly conflicted, she hesitated for a moment, glancing at Shenanigan, then Matt, before issuing a quick nod to Shenanigan and chasing after Matt.

The tree's silhouette was huge, much larger than it seemed on the map screen. Natty guessed that it towered at least ten metres from the ground. The trunk was so thick it could fit two people inside it, although there seemed that there was not much space to do anything. The hollowed out gap was in the shape of an arched door, about three metres tall. There were no leaves on the tree.

"Wait!" Natty called to Matt, who was just about to enter the tree without precaution, blindly shining the torchlight in front of him. "Who knows what's in there? Walk in slowly, and take this branch with you. I don't know, it's sharp enough to stab someone. Scream if there's danger."

Matt looked a little dubious about the screaming part but took the branch that Natty offered him, which she had sawed from the tree, which seemed puny in comparison with her sword. Matt wondered why she didn't offer him the sword in the first place.

The branch was thick at the base and fairly straight, growing into a sharp edge at the end. A few small nuts grew off a side-branch on the stick. Matt plucked them off and pocketed them.

"Hazelnut," he commented. "That's rare."

He then stepped in very, very slowly, so as to reassure the apprehensive Natty behind him, and waited for a response from anything inside. Not a whisper.