In that village, the men drink frogspawn and girls give birth in ponds. There’s six ponds, one night of rutting, two-weeks of birthing, and then a bunch of sacrifices. There’s always sacrifices, but we’re not sure why. That’s the problem, you see. That’s what we want to know about. I can take us all up to the black rocks on Whispering Tor and show you through my eyeglass. You’ll see the whole thing, top to bottom, beginning to end. The glugging and the rutting, the birthing and the bleeds. Look as close as you can when the light’s right, and you’ll see their fingers and toes are all webbed, and they’ve got these warts on their faces that they think are beautiful. You might even see the pink frogs that make the spawn if you’re lucky. And if you spot them, look right hard on their stupid little faces to see that smug expression they’ve all got. The frogs not the people. Actually. Yeah, the people as well. That’s the thing about them in that village. Smug. Like they know it all.

Anyways, when we get that type in our ponds, the pink frogs, we skewer them faster than they can blink. You’ve seen the special forks we got for it. The two glass prongs, the twenty-inch iron shaft, the handle made from boar tusk. We each get our own when the girls say they’re on bleeds and the boys show off their stiffies. There’s this ceremony, which is all a bit daft really, but the best bit is the pronging-out next day when they lads and girls go on their first frog hunts. Loads of innocent common frogs and toads get stabbed up, but that’s OK, they’re just acceptable practice for the main event. And there’s always a main event. As long as that village keep doing their spawn-drinking thing, then we’ll keep getting visits from those smug little pink gits at pretty much same couple of times every year. And out we go, forks glinting in the first-light, silent as grass so they don’t hear us coming. While that village are a-birthing, we’re out here a-stabbing: life and death, life and death, around and around, that’s how it always goes. Then we eat the things. The legs get fried with rosemary, the eyes put in puddings like raisins, the body-flesh raw. Then, afterwards, the boys draw lots, and the longest straw has to drink the frog brain in a shot of onion brine. But then that lad gets his pick of the girls, and the girl has to pretend she doesn’t want him, and he chases her down with his fork. He’s not supposed to stab her, not with the fork anyway, but I guess Eric got carried away. Some say that sometimes the frog-brain slips upwards, not down, hopping its way into brains, messing things up as it goes. It only happens if the lad isn’t strong, and we all knew Eric wasn’t strong, not really, because strong lads don’t get themselves into trouble all the time. But there’s no telling who’ll get the longest straw, and which girl will get picked. It just falls the way it does.

You folks turning up was good, actually. We’d never have found Lucy if it weren’t for you and your murder boars. Is it true that you live in treehouses? How do you know when the boars are sniffing for death and not just rooting out truffles? Is murder boars the right name, or do they find other bad stuff too, like cheating and cursing and under-cleaning? They’re the boars we use for fork handles, but there’s not much you can do about that, is there? Is it true your women use the tusks for pleasures? Is it true that your women lie on boarskins when they want to rut? Is it true you can’t rut them until they say so? I’ve heard the women cover themselves in soils and you men have to lick it all away, every last bit, before they let you open their legs. I’ve heard you call your children hoglets. I’ve heard you don’t eat meat, except for once a year, when you catch all the birds you’ve tamed and roast them. Is that when you all make that dreadful screaming noise twice every hour for a whole night? We can hear you from here, so it must be something. Do your women give birth up in the trees and let their babies drop into nets? Doesn’t that hurt? Who cuts the string? Do the men do it with special knives? Or do the boys do it, and if they do it wrong, they have their lips pinned together for a whole week? Some of us have seen your boys with their lips pinned, and that’s what they say. That they didn’t catch the babies right.

Do you eat the birds they make in the next village over? The ones made from tiny springs and wheels that clatter and whir when they fly? Are you at war with that village? Do they trick your boars into eating bombs and then blow them up when you’re out on your murder hunts? Is it true their men all have one metal hand for fighting?

We’ll punish Eric, that’s not up to you. We’re going to send him to that village, where the men drink the spawn, and the women give birth in ponds. He’s going to tell them he’s an exile, but really, he’ll be a spy. He’s going to sneak back and tell us about the sacrifices. Who they choose and why, and if its all because of some kind of god or something. We don’t have a god, but we want to make sure we’re not wrong, I guess. Do you have a god? Is it a woman god with a boar’s head? Is it a boar’s body, a woman’s head, and some kind of bird wings? Anyway, if they figure out Eric’s a spy and drown him, well that’s his problem.

Do your murder boars sniff out the sacrifices, or is that something different? Does the soil of the forest not make you sick? Is it special or magic or something? If we let you go, will you take Lucy’s bones and bury her in it? Maybe that’s what we’ll do then. But you’ll have to come back with your babies and show us them, because if Lucy’s reborn we’ll need to know. If that’s how it all works, from spawn, to frogs, to soils, to tree-births, we properly and actually need to know.

Right, yes, that’s what we’ll do. Two of you stay here in the cellars, the rest take Lucy’s bones and make her come back. If you bring her home, that’ll be brilliant, and we’ll get it all written down as a proper cycle, around and around; from them frogs, via our forks, to your soil, and back again. Your village and ours, working together, fighting off them metal hand bastards, and those sacrifice weirdos, and showing who’s best. And if you don’t bring Lucy back, well that’s your problem not ours.

Oh, and bring your women as well. We’ve got loads of questions. We just want to understand. That’s all we ever want. To figure it all out. Does that all sound fair? Alright then, let’s get on with it.