"Ah!" said Doctor Fyfe, stumbling just before he was intercepted before the door of the chapel by a concerned undertaker. "Ah!" he said again, and crumpled, first into the undertaker's arms and then to the ground. He was on his knees briefly, then turned and sat down, clutched at his chest, stared at the granite flagstones outside the chapel, and to the assembled, still stunned and quieted crowd of us announced, "I'm sorry, folks, but I believe I'm having a coronary… " and keeled over on his back.

There was an instant when nothing much seemed to happen. Then Dean Watt nudged me with the hand holding his Regal and said quietly, "There's a funny thing, eh?"

"Dean!" hissed Ashley, as people crowded round the doctor.

"Oo-ya!"

"Call an ambulance!" somebody shouted.

"Use the hearse!" yelled my dad.

"Och, it's only a bruise," Dean muttered, rubbing vigorously at his shin. "Oo-ya! Will ye quit that!"

They used the hearse, and got Doctor Fyfe to the local hospital in ample time to save his life if not his professional reputation.

The muffled crump — which I still maintain that I heard — was my grandmother exploding; Doctor Fyfe had neglected to ask the hospital to remove her pacemaker before she was cremated.

Like I say, this sort of thing keeps happening in my family.

CHAPTER 2

These were the days of fond promise, when the world was very small and there was still magic in it. He told them stories of the Secret Mountain and the Sound that could be Seen, of the Forest drowned by Sand and the trees that were time-stilled waters; he told them about the Slow Children and the Magic Duvet and the Well-Travelled Country, and they believed all of it. They learned of distant times and long-ago places, of who they were and what they weren't, and of what had and what had never been.