Often she’ll travel to a clan which has no kelda. Very, very rarely, if there is no clan without a kelda, she’ll meet with Feegles from several clans and form a completely new clan, with a new name and a mound of its own. She will also choose her husband. And from then on, while her word is absolute law among her clan and must be obeyed, she’ll seldom go more than a little distance from the mound. She is both its queen and its prisoner.

But once, for a few days, there was a kelda who was a human girl…

A Feegle Glossary, adjusted for those of a delicate disposition

Bigjobs: human beings.

Blethers: rubbish, nonsense.

Carlirr: old woman.

Cludgie: the privy.

Crivens!: a general exclamation that can mean anything from ‘My goodness!’ to ‘I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble.’

Dree: your/my/his/her weird facing the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her.

Geas: a very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird.

Eldritch: weird, strange. Sometimes means oblong, too, for some reason.

Hag: a witch, of any age.

Hagging/Haggling: anything a witch does.

Hiddlins: secrets.

Mudlim: useless person.

Pished: I am assured that this means ‘tired’.

Scunner: a generally unpleasant person.

Scuggam: a really unpleasant person.

Ships: woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind.

Spavie: see Mudlin.

Special Sheep Liniment: probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. No one knows what it’d do to sheep, but it is said that a drop of it is good for shepherds on a cold winter’s night and for Feegles at any time at all. Do not try to make this at home.