Mud-in-the-List
Now, said the Duke, I am going to strip away the walls of this castle; and you must know that you are on the edge of Fairyland, which is the name you keep avoiding, by the way, on the very edge, to be exact, and when the walls of this castle disappear, the wind which always blows from that place will strike you, and as you will no longer be protected by these walls of mine, that Fairy blast will kill you. It's a cheap way to be rid of one's enemies and very much to my taste.
"Not bloody likely," said somebody in the crowd. The Zanzibar cat horripilated like a bottle-brush. He arched himself on the Duke's hump and spat a ghastly gah! like an ordinary cat. There was a stir in the crowd as the Miller's daughter pushed through. She did not look, to those who looked at her, like the same girl she had been, sweet as a lamb and so shy she could not hold up her head. She looked possessed. She looked, in fact, (as they blinked and rubbed their eyes) not at all like a young girl of twenty but like a woman twice that age, and a spinster too, and a hard one too, as hard as nails, or maybe a many-times-married woman, because the effect is -- curiously enough -- much the same. All this came out in her face gradually as she walked the length of that courtly hall, and as rooms seem to listen to what's being said in them and to conform themselves to it, so the hall shrank as the Milleress walked down it until it seemed to the army of Appletap-on-Flat that they stood in a smoky tavern on the edge of the Merry Marches where a desperate and infamous gambler sat in front of a half-spent fire and that the gambler was the Duke. Some even fancied that the Milleress looked rather like a landlady, a comparison that evoked painful memories in many. The Duke's cat, still threatening, had nevertheless hidden behind the Duke's neck. He plucked it into his lap and stroked its fur. It settled, though cautiously.
It is very much to my taste, he repeated, and accords well with my fancy. I will do it now.
"You will not," said the Milleress. The room shrank a little more.
-- Joanna Russ, "The Zanzibar Cat (Hommage à Hope Mirrlees)"
"Not bloody likely," said somebody in the crowd. The Zanzibar cat horripilated like a bottle-brush. He arched himself on the Duke's hump and spat a ghastly gah! like an ordinary cat. There was a stir in the crowd as the Miller's daughter pushed through. She did not look, to those who looked at her, like the same girl she had been, sweet as a lamb and so shy she could not hold up her head. She looked possessed. She looked, in fact, (as they blinked and rubbed their eyes) not at all like a young girl of twenty but like a woman twice that age, and a spinster too, and a hard one too, as hard as nails, or maybe a many-times-married woman, because the effect is -- curiously enough -- much the same. All this came out in her face gradually as she walked the length of that courtly hall, and as rooms seem to listen to what's being said in them and to conform themselves to it, so the hall shrank as the Milleress walked down it until it seemed to the army of Appletap-on-Flat that they stood in a smoky tavern on the edge of the Merry Marches where a desperate and infamous gambler sat in front of a half-spent fire and that the gambler was the Duke. Some even fancied that the Milleress looked rather like a landlady, a comparison that evoked painful memories in many. The Duke's cat, still threatening, had nevertheless hidden behind the Duke's neck. He plucked it into his lap and stroked its fur. It settled, though cautiously.
It is very much to my taste, he repeated, and accords well with my fancy. I will do it now.
"You will not," said the Milleress. The room shrank a little more.
-- Joanna Russ, "The Zanzibar Cat (Hommage à Hope Mirrlees)"