“By the time a few years had passed we’d settled ourselves all through these dales. Certain farmsteads and local spots were spoken of as being ‘haunted bi t’hob’; well, one way and another we found out where they were and one of us would go and live there, and carry on according to tradition. Not all of us did that, now—some just found a farm they liked and moved in. But for instance it was believed that a certain hob, that lived in a cave at Runswick up on the coast, could cure what they called t’kink-cough, so one of us went on up there to be Hob Hole Hob, and when the mothers would bring their sick children and call to him to cure them, he’d do what he could.”
“What could he do, though?”
“Not a great deal, but more than nothing. He could make them more comfortable, and unless a child was very ill, he could make it more likely that they would recover.”
“How? Herbs and potions?”
“No, not at all—merely the power of suggestion. But quite effective, oh aye.
“There was a tradition too of a hob in Farndale that was the troublesome sort, and as it seemed wisest not to neglect that mischievous side of our ledger altogether, once in a while we would send somebody over there to let out the calves and spill the milk and put a cart on the barn roof, and generally make a nuisance of himself. It kept the old beliefs alive, you see. It wouldn’t have done for people to start thinking the hobs had all got good as gold, we had the sense to see that. The dalesfolk used to say, ‘Gin t’hobman takes ti yan, ya’r yal reet i’ t’lang run, but deea he tak agin’ ’ee ’tis anither story!’ We wanted them to go right on saying that.
“But we did take to them—aye, we did indeed, though the Gafr and the dalesmen were so unlike. The Yorkshire farmer of those times for all his faults was what they call the salt of the earth. They made us good masters, and we served them well for nigh on two hundred years.”
Jenny wriggled and leaned toward Elphi, raptly attending. “Did any of you ever talk with humans, face to face? Did you ever have any human friends, that you finally told the truth to?”
“No, my dear. We had no friends among humans in the sense you mean, though we befriended a few in particular. Nor did we often speak with humans. We thought it vital to protect and preserve their sense of us as magical and strange—supernatural, in fact. But now and again it would happen.
“I’ll tell you of one such occasion. For many and many a year my home was at Hob Garth near Great Fryup Dale, where a family called Stonehouse had the holding. There was a Thomas Stonehouse once that lived there and kept sheep.
“Now, the time I’m speaking of would have been about 1760 or thereabouts, when Tommy was beginning to get on a bit in years. Somehow he fell out with a neighbor of his called Matthew Bland, an evil-tempered fellow he was, and one night I saw Bland creep along and break the hedge, and drive out Tommy’s ewes. Tommy was out all the next day in the wet, trying to round them up, but without much luck for he only found five out of the forty, and so I says to myself: here’s a job for Hob. The next morning all forty sheep were back in the field and the hedge patched up with new posts and rails.
“Well! but that wasn’t all: when I knew Tommy to be laid up with a cold, and so above suspicion himself, I nipped along and let Bland’s cattle loose. A perfectly hobbish piece of work that was! Old Bland, he was a full fortnight rounding them up. Of course, at the time the mischief was done Tommy had been in his bed with chills and a fever, and everybody knew it; but Bland came and broke the new fence anyway and let the sheep out again—he was that furious, he had to do something.
“As Tommy was still too ill to manage, his neighbors turned out to hunt the sheep for him. But the lot of ’em had wandered up onto the tops in a roke like the one we had yesterday evening, and none could be found at all. All the same, that night Hob rounded them up and drove them home, and repaired the fence again. Bear in mind, my dear, that such feats as the farmers deemed prodigious were simple enough for us, for we have excellent sight in the dark, and great strength in the low gravity here, and are quick on our feet, whether four or two.
“Now, four of Tommy’s ewes had fallen into a quarry in the roke and broken their necks, and never came home again. When he was well enough he walked out to the field to see what was left of the flock and cut some hay for it—this was early spring, I remember, just about this time. We’d waked sooner than usual that year, which was a bit of luck for Tommy. I saw him heading up there, and followed. And when I knew him to be grieving over the four lost ewes I accosted him in the road and said not to fret any more, that the sheep would be accounted for and then some at lambing time—for I knew that most were carrying twins, and I meant to help with the lambing as well, to see that as many as possible would live.
“He took me then for an old man, a bit barmy though kindly intentioned. But later, when things turned out the way I’d said, it was generally talked of—how there was no use Matthew Bland trying to play tricks on Tommy Stonehouse, for the hobman had befriended him, and when t’hobman taks ti yan . . . aye, it was a bit of luck for Tommy that we woke early that spring.
“But to speak directly to a farmer so, that was rare. More often the farmer took the initiative upon himself, or his wife or children or servants did, by slipping out to spy upon us at work, or by coming to beg a cure. There was talk of a hob that haunted a cave in the Mulgrave Woods, for instance. People would put their heads in and shout ‘Hob-thrush Hob! Where is thoo?’ and the hob was actually meant to reply—and the dear knows how this tradition began—‘Ah’s tyin’ on mah lef fuit shoe, An’ Ah’ll be wiv thee—noo!” Well, we didn’t go as far as that, but once in a while one of us might slip up there for a bit so’s to be able to shout back if anyone called into the cave. Most often it was children.
“Mostly, people weren’t frightened of t’hob. But as I’ve said, we thought it as well to keep the magic bright. There was one old chap, name of Gray, with a farm over in Bransdale; he married himself a new wife who couldn’t or wouldn’t remember to put out the jug of cream at bedtime as the old wife had always done. Well, Hodge Hob, that had helped that family for generations, he pulled out of there and never went back. And another time a family called Oughtred, that farmed over near Upleatham, lost their hob because he died. That was Hob Hill Hob, that missed his step and broke his neck in a mine shaft, the first of us all to go out since the very beginning. Well, Kempswithen overheard the Oughtreds discussing it—whyever had the hob gone away?—and they agreed it must have been because one of the workmen had hung his coat on the winnowing machine and forgot it, and the hobman had thought it was left there for him—for everyone knew you mustn’t offer clothes to fairies and such or they’ll take offense.
“Well! We’d been thinking another of us might go and live at Hob Hill Farm, but after that we changed our minds. And when a new milkmaid over at Hart Hall spied on Hart Hall Hob and saw him flailing away at the corn one night without a stitch on, and made him a shirt to wear, and left it in the barn, we knew he’d have to leave there, too, and he did. One curious thing: the family at Hart Hall couldn’t decide whether the hob had been offended because he’d been given the shirt at all, or because it had been cut from coarse cloth instead of fine linen! We know, because they fretted about it for months, and sacked the girl.
“At all events we’d make the point now and then that you mustn’t offend the hob or interfere with him or get too close and crowd him, and so we made out pretty well. Still hoping for rescue, you know, but content enough on the whole. We were living all through the dales, north and south, the eleven of us who were left alive—at Runswick, Great Fryup, Commondale, Kempswithen, Hasty Bank, Scugdale, Farndale, Hawnby, Broxa . . . Woof Howe . . . and we’d visit a few in-between places that were said to be haunted by t’hob, like the Mulgrave Cave and Obtrush Rook above Farndale. It was all right.
“But after a longish time things began to change. This would be perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, give or take a couple of decades. Well, I don’t know just how it
was, but bit by bit the people hereabouts began to be less believing somehow, less sure their grandfathers had really seen the fairies dance on Fairy Cross Plain, or that Obtrush Rook was really and truly haunted by the hobman. And by and by we began to feel that playing hob i’ t’hill had ceased to be altogether safe. Even in these dales there were people now that wanted explanations for things, and that weren’t above poking their noses into our affairs.
“And so, little by little, we began to withdraw from the farms. For even though we were no longer afraid of being taken for Satan’s imps and hunted down, concealment had been our way of getting by for such a very long time that we preferred to go on the same way. But for the first time in many long years we often found ourselves thinking of the ship again and wishing for its return. But I fear the ship was lost.
“Gradually, then, we drew back out of the dales to the high moortops, moved into the winter dens we’d been using right along, and set ourselves to learning how to live up here entirely—to catch grouse and hares, and find eggs and berries, instead of helping ourselves to the farmer’s stores. Oh, we were good hunters and we loved these moors already, but still it was a hard and painful time, almost a second exile. I remember how I once milked a ewe—thinking to get some cream—only to find that it was the jug set out for me by the farmer’s wife that I wanted and missed, for that was a symbol of my service to a master that respected what I did for him; but a worse time was coming.
“There were mines on the moors since there were people in the land at all, but not so very long after we had pulled back up out of the dales altogether, ironstone began to be mined in Rosedale on a larger scale than ever before, and they built a railroad to carry the ore ’right round the heads of Rosedale and Farndale and down to Battersby Junction. I daresay you know the right of way now as a footpath, my dear, for part of it lies along the route of the Lyke Wake Walk. But in the middle of the last century men came pouring onto the high moors to build the railroad. Some even lived up here, in shacks, while the work was ongoing. And more men poured across the moors from the villages all round about, to work in the Rosedale pits, and then there was no peace at all for us, and no safety.
“That was when we first were forced to go about by day in sheepskin. It was Kempswithen’s idea, he was a clever one! The skins weren’t too difficult to get hold of, for sheep die of many natural causes, and also they are easily killed, though we never culled more than a single sheep from anyone’s flock, and then always an old ewe or a lame one, of little value. It went against the grain to rob the farmers at all, but without some means of getting about by daylight we could not have managed. The ruse worked well, for nearly all the railroad workers and miners came here from outside the dales, and were unobservant about the ways of sheep, and we were careful.
“But the noise and smoke and peacelessness drove us away from our old haunts onto the bleakest part of the high moors where the fewest tracks crossed. We went out there and dug ourselves in.
“It was a dreary time. And the mines had scarcely been worked out and the railroad dismantled when the Second War began, and there were soldiers training on Rudland Rigg above Farndale, driving their tanks over Obtrush Rook till they had knocked it to bits, and over Fylingdales Moor, where we’d gone to escape the miners and the trains.”
“Fylingdales, where the Early Warning System is now?”
“Aye, that’s the place. During the war a few planes made it up this far, and some of the villages were hit. We slept through a good deal of that, luckily—we’d found this den by then, you see, an old jet working that a fox had opened. But it was uneasy sleep, it did us little good. Most particularly, it was not good for us to be of no use to any master—that began to do us active harm, and we were getting old. Two of us died before the war ended, another not long after. And still the ship did not return.”
Something had been nagging at Jenny. “Couldn’t you have reproduced yourselves after you came up here? You know—formed a viable community of hobs in hiding. Kept your spirits up.”
“No, my dear. Not in this world. It wasn’t possible, we knew it from the first, you see.”
“Why wasn’t it possible?” But Elphi firmly shook his head; this was plainly a subject he did not wish to pursue. Perhaps it was too painful. “Well, so now there are only eight of you?”
“Seven,” said Elphi. “When I woke yesterday Woof Howe was dead. I’d been wondering what in the world to do with him when I so stupidly allowed you to see me.”
Jenny threw the shadowed bunks a startled glance, wondering which contained a corpse. But something else disturbed her more. “You surely can’t mean to say that in the past hundred and fifty years not one of you has ever been caught off-guard, until yesterday!”
Elphi gave the impression of smiling, though he did not really smile. “Oh, no, my dear. One or another of us has been caught napping a dozen times or more, especially in the days since the Rosedale mines were opened. Quite a few folk have sat just where you’re sitting and listened, as you’ve been listening, to much the same tale I’ve been telling you. Dear me, yes! Once we rescued eight people from a train stalled in a late spring snowstorm, and we’ve revived more than one walker in the last stages of hypothermia—that’s besides the ones who took us by surprise.”
His ancient face peered up at her through scraggly white hair, and Jenny’s apprehension grew. “And none of them ever told? It’s hard to believe.”
“My dear, none of them has ever remembered a thing about it afterwards! Would we take such trouble to keep ourselves hidden, only to tell the whole story to any stranger that happens by? No, indeed. It passes the time and entertains our guests, but they always forget. As will you, I promise—but you’ll be safe as houses. Your only problem will be accounting for the lost day.”
###
Jenny had eaten every scrap of her emergency food and peed the plastic pail nearly full, and now she huddled under her sheepskin robe by the light of a single fresh candle, waiting for Elphi to come back. He had refused to let her climb up to empty her own slops and fetch back her own laundry. “I’m sorry, my dear, but there’s no roke today—that’s the difficulty. If ever you saw this place again you would remember it—and besides, you know, it’s no hardship for me to do you a service.” So she waited, a prisoner beneath the heavy doorway stone, desperately trying to think of a way to prevent Elphi from stealing back her memories of him.
Promising not to tell anybody, ever, had had no effect. (“They all promise, you know, but how can we afford the risk? Put yourself in my place.”) She cudgeled her wits: what could she offer him in exchange for being allowed to remember all this? Nothing came. The things the hobs needed—a different social order on Earth, the return of the Gafr ship, the Yorkshire of three centuries ago—were all beyond her power to grant.
Jenny found she believed Elphi’s tale entirely: that he had come to Earth from another world, that he would not harm her in any way, that he could wipe the experience of himself from her mind—as effortlessly as she might wipe a chalkboard with a wet rag—by “the power of suggestion,” just as Hob Hole Hob had “cured” the whooping cough by the power of suggestion. Somewhere in the course of telling, both skepticism and terror had been neutralized by a conviction that the little creature was speaking the unvarnished truth. She had welcomed this conviction. It was preferable to the fear that she had gone stark raving mad; but above and beyond all that she did believe him.
And all at once she had an idea that just might work. At least it seemed worth trying; she darted across the stone floor and scrabbled frantically in a pocket of her pack. There was just enough time. She burrowed back beneath the sheepskin robe where Elphi had left her with only seconds to spare.
The old hob backed down the ladder with her pail flopping from one hand and her bundle of clothes clutched in the opposite arm, and this time he left the top of the shaft open to the light and cold and the wuthering of the wind. He had tied his sheepskin on again. “Time to suit up
now, I think—we want to set you back in the path at the same place and time of day.” He scanned the row of sleepers anxiously and seemed to sigh.
Jenny’s pile of pants and wool socks were nearly dry, her sweaters, long johns, and boots only dampish. She threw off the sheepskins and began to pull on the many layers of clothing one by one. “I was wondering,” she said as she dressed, “I wanted to ask you, how could the hobs just leave a farm where they’d been in secret service for maybe a hundred years?”
Elphi’s peculiar flat eyes peered at her mildly. “Our bond was to the serving, you see. There were always other farms where extra hands were needed. What grieved us was to leave the dales entirely.”
No bond to the people they served, then; no friendship, just as he had said. But all the same—“Why couldn’t you come out of hiding now? I know it could be arranged! People all over the world would give anything to know about you!”
Elphi seemed both amused and sad. “No, my dear. Put it out of your mind. First, because we must wait here so long as any of us is left alive, in case the ship should come. Second, because we love these moors and would not leave them. Third, because here on Earth we have always served in secret, and have got too old to care to change our ways. Fourth, because if people knew about us we would never again be given a moment’s peace. Surely you know that’s so.”
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