‘The others?’
‘You know,’ she replied. ‘Other Pixies. Like me.’
‘Yet you came,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Elgar is part Elf, and he isn’t so bad. So are several of the Elders. Is it true, that Elves have been hurting Pixies?’
The Thane frowned. ‘What have you heard?’
‘Well . . . just that,’ she replied uncertainly.
Wondering how to explain things to her, he said, ‘Some Elves . . . not all, but some . . . have been doing some very bad things. To Pixies, as well as to each other.’
‘Like Prince Cir?’ she ventured. ‘I saw him running away through the forest after the big fight. He reminds me of a bad Pixie.’
‘I have never seen a bad Pixie,’ said the Thane, making a mental note of Cir’s possible whereabouts. ‘Have you?’
Satu nodded sombrely. ‘Only once. She had blood on her hands and on her mouth. The others drove her away, saying she had eaten . . . I think they said a gröeling, whatever that is.’ She shuddered. ‘I was very small then, and my mother took me away from there. I don’t know what happened to the bad Pixie, but I do know that they buried whatever it was she was eating, and they were very sad about it.’