It was a warm day, but the swarms of tiny flies that filled the damp air stayed clear of them as they made their way past the hot pool and towards the path home, hovering high above the short-statured dwarves. The rest of the team would follow soon, but these three, whose real names hadn’t been used in so long they’d almost forgotten what they were, had earned themselves an early finish. Grouchy took the lead, Dreamy behind him, and Stumpy, his nickname earned after he’d been pulled screaming from beneath a rock slide, his crushed hand missing, followed behind them. They were lost in their own thoughts for most of the journey until they reached the crossroads. Dreamy paused, his feet breaking their marching rhythm and his companions stopped beside him.

A figure was shuffling along the worn path. Even with her head bowed the glaring warts that covered her nose and chin were visible and her hair hung in grey strings. Her dress, a mixture of worn rags cobbled together into some kind of shroud-like garment had perhaps once been black but was long faded to grey. ‘A crone,’ Dreamy muttered, his eyes narrowing. ‘No good can come from a crone.’

The old woman raised a hand in greeting and hobbled closer. She smiled and Dreamy shivered at the blackness in the gaps where so many missing teeth should have been. ‘Travel safely, ma’am.’ Grouchy nodded to her, tipping his hat as if he were a gentleman of the court rather than a dwarf with black mine dust so ingrained on his skin that he could no longer scrub it off.

‘I thank you, young man.’ The words were weak and came out in a hiss of air that whistled through her gums. She was carrying a basket and under the checked cloth, Dreamy could just make out a large, perfectly red and waxy apple. His mouth watered slightly. She started to hobble away from them and then paused, her wizened head creaking round on her brittle shoulders until she’d fixed them with one watery eye.

‘I saw a thing,’ she said, ‘that might be useful to you. A deer. Dead a little way back in the shade of a great willow. Straight from here as the crow flies. Looked fresh.’ She paused. ‘You look hungry.’

‘We have to get back to our cottage,’ Dreamy said. His skin tingled warily even though she was an old woman and he was a hardy dwarf with thirty years mining under his belt and an axe hanging across his back.

‘Fair enough. Something in the forest will have it. Fresh meat rarely goes to waste.’ He raised a hand to say farewell, but she’d already turned and continued her slow shuffle along the path. The dwarves didn’t move.