First published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd in 1977
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016
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Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1977
Map illustration © Sally Taylor 2016
Cover artwork © Manuel Šumberac
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008170653
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008170660
Version: 2016-10-21
Map of North and South Dalemark
For my mother
Contents
Map of North and South Dalemark
PEOPLE MAY WONDER how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.
Mitt was born the day of the Holand Sea Festival, and he was called Alhammitt after his father. Perhaps the first sound Mitt heard as he burst bawling into the world was his parents laughing about both these things.
“Well, he took his time,” said Mitt’s father, “and chose his day all right. What does this make him? A man of straw, born to be drowned?”
Milda,