The glossary

Words the hollow uses, as far as you have read. The ledger keeps your place. It does not read ahead.

Showing words through Day 1.

the Anunder: The country beneath. Everything under the hedge and behind the wall and down between the mushrooms, from this hollow to Gnomesby and past it to places the ledger has heard of and not visited. Letters come by beetle in the Anunder. Names are held. Nobody comes in. First recorded on Day One
grumlin: A gnome, and a gnome, for anyone who has only seen the ones in gardens, is a person about the height of a good boot, built low and wide as if by someone who expected weather. Wears a hat; to be without one is nakedness. First recorded on Day One
fliskie: A winged person of the hedge. To be without wings is a funeral. First recorded on Day One
hollowfolk: The people of a hollow, of both peoples, taken together, which is not often. They regard the green much as sailors regard the sea and Gnomesby much as sailors regard the far shore. First recorded on Day One
the hollow: This one: the gate at the foot of the hedge, the path of flat stones, the mushroom patch, the compost heap, Wick's shed, the table where the ledger is kept, and the window above the gate where it is watched from. First recorded on Day One
the Occupant: What the ledger called the newcomer from the night she came through the gate. Not a title, and not to be mistaken for one. The ledger will call her something else when it has reason to, and not before, and it has said so. First recorded on Day One
keeper: The one who keeps a hollow, which takes three seals: the Gate, which is Mungo's word, and Mungo does not give his word; the Court, which is the seal of the Court of the Fliskies, a day's flight away; and the Ledger, which is a page in Grizel's book in your own hand, and nobody has ever written in Grizel's book but Grizel. A hollow with no keeper at first frost is, under Clause Seven, Unkept. First recorded on Day One
the Above: The people of the Stair, seen only as boots, hands, a torch and a watering can, and understood by the hollow as one enormous presence with many boots and a theology. Rain is it washing its boots. Every hollow has a theology of the Above and no two agree. First recorded on Day One
the Stair: The tall building of flats above the green, six floors of it, full of the Above in its many boots. Holds a meeting every spring about the hedge and cuts it never, on the grounds that it is always somebody else's turn. Notices things late. First recorded on Day One
the green: The stretch of grass beyond the gate, with the drying poles in it and the bins along the wall and Gnomesby at the far end. To the hollowfolk it is the sea, and is crossed by nobody who can help it. First recorded on Day One
relocated: Moved from where it was. The Occupant's bootlace has been relocated. First recorded on Day One
a Mungo: A unit of time: the pause between being told nobody comes in and coming in. Agreed after the first such pause, which was considerable and for which no unit then existed. Wick built a device to measure it. The device is nearly ready. First recorded on Day One
nearly ready: Wick's description of the device he built to measure a Mungo. The ledger has recorded it as given. First recorded on Day One
tipped: What one does for a beetle that has carried a letter, and what nobody did on the first day, partly because the newcomer had nothing to tip it with and partly because nobody told her. The beetle left with the air of a beetle who would be mentioning this. Of all the decisions made in the hollow that week, this was the one with the longest consequences, and nobody made it. First recorded on Day One
Clause Seven: Of the Treaty of the Mushroom Patch: a hollow with no keeper at first frost reverts to Gnomesby, for safekeeping. The word safekeeping was doing a great deal of work in that sentence, and knew it, and had brought a chair. First recorded on Day One