The Wee Free Men d(-2 Read online

  I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn’t understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once. She was Sarah Grizzel. She got married and had children, two of them in the shepherding hut. She must’ve done all sorts of things I don’t know about.

  And into Tiffany’s mind, as it always did sooner or later, came the figure of the blue-and-white china shepherdess, swirling in red mists of shame…

  Tiffany’s father took her to the fair at the town of Yelp one day not long before her seventh birthday, when the farm had some rams to sell. That was a ten-mile journey, the furthest she’d ever been. It was off the Chalk. Everything looked different. There were far more fenced fields and lots of cows and the buildings had tiled roofs instead of thatch. She considered that this was foreign travel.

  Granny Aching had never been there, said her father on the way. She hated leaving the Chalk, he said. She said it made her dizzy.

  It was a great day. Tiffany was sick on candyfloss, had her fortune told by a little old lady who said that many, many men would want to marry her, and won the shepherdess, which was made of china painted in white and blue.

  She was the star prize on the hoop-la stall, but Tiffany’s father had said that it was all cheating, because the base was so wide that not one throw in a million could ever drop the hoop right over it.

  She’d thrown the ring any old how, and it had been the one in a million. The stallholder hadn’t been very happy about it landing over the shepherdess rather than the gimcrack rubbish on the rest of the stall. He handed it over when her father spoke sharply to him, though, and she’d hugged it all the way home on the cart, while the stars came out.

  Next morning she’d proudly presented it to Granny Aching. The old woman had taken it very carefully in her wrinkled hands and stared at it for some time.

  Tiffany was sure, now, that it had been a cruel thing to do.

  Granny Aching had probably never heard of shepherdesses. People who cared for sheep on the Chalk were all called shepherds, and that was all there was to it. And this beautiful creature was as much unlike Granny Aching as anything could be.

  The china shepherdess had an old-fashioned long dress, with the bulgy bits at the side that made it look as though she had saddlebags in her knickers. There were blue ribbons all over the dress, and all over the rather showy straw bonnet, and on the shepherd’s crook, which was a lot more curly than any crook Tiffany had ever seen.

  There were even blue bows on the dainty foot poking out from the frilly hem of her dress.

  This wasn’t a shepherdess who’d ever worn big old boots stuffed with wool, and tramped the hills in the howling wind with the sleet being driven along like nails. She’d never tried in that dress to pull out a ram who’d got his horns tangled in a thorn patch. This wasn’t a shepherdess who’d kept up with the champion shearer for seven hours, sheep for sheep, until the air was hazy with grease and wool and blue with cussing, and the champion gave up because he couldn’t cuss sheep as well as Granny Aching. No self-respecting sheepdog would ever ‘come by’ or ‘walk up’ for a simpering girl with saddlebags in her pants. It was a lovely thing but it was a joke of a shepherdess, made by someone who’d probably never seen a sheep up close.

  What had Granny Aching thought about it? Tiffany couldn’t guess. She’d seemed happy, because it’s the job of grandmothers to be happy when grandchildren give them things. She’d put it up on her shelf, and then taken Tiffany on her knee and called her ‘my little jiggit’ in a nervous sort of way, which she did when she was trying to be grandmotherly.

  Sometimes, in the rare times Granny was down at the farm, Tiffany would see her take down the statue and stare at it. But if she saw Tiffany watching she’d put it back quickly, and pretend she’d meant to pick up the sheep book.

  Perhaps, Tiffany thought wretchedly, the old lady had seen it as a sort of insult. Perhaps she thought she was being told that this was what a shepherdess should look like. She shouldn’t be an old lady in a muddy dress and big boots, with an old sack around her shoulders to keep the rain off. A shepherdess should sparkle like a starry night. Tiffany hadn’t meant to, she’d never meant to, but perhaps she had been telling Granny that she wasn’t… right.

  And then a few months after that Granny had died, and in the years since then everything had gone wrong. Wentworth had been born, and then the Baron’s son had vanished, and then there had been that bad winter when Mrs Snapperly died in the snow.

  Tiffany kept worrying about the statue. She couldn’t talk about it. Everyone else was busy, or not interested. Everyone was edgy. They’d have said that worrying about a silly statue was… silly.

  Several times she nearly smashed the shepherdess, but she didn’t because people would notice.

  She wouldn’t have given something as wrong as that to Granny Aching now, of course. She’d grown up.

  She remembered that the old lady would smile oddly, sometimes, when she looked at the statue. If only she’d said something. But Granny liked silence.

  And now it turned out that she’d made friends with a lot of little blue men, who walked the hills looking after the sheep, because they liked her, too. Tiffany blinked.

  It made a kind of sense. In memory of Granny Aching, the men left the tobacco. And in memory of Granny Aching, the Nac Mac Feegle minded the sheep. It all worked, even if it wasn’t magic. But it took Granny away.

  ‘Daft Wullie?’ she said, staring hard at the struggling pictsie and trying not to cry.

  ‘Mmph?’

  ‘Is it true what Rob Anybody told me?’

  ‘Mmph!’ Daft Wullie’s eyebrows went up and down furiously.

  ‘Mr. Feegle, you can please take your hand away from his mouth,’ said Tiffany. Daft Wullie was released. Rob Anybody had looked worried, but Daft Wullie was terrified. He dragged his bonnet off and stood holding it in his hands, as if it was some kind of shield.

  ‘Is all that true, Daft Wullie?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Oh waily waily—’

  ‘Just a simple yes or—A simple aye or nay, please.’

  ‘Aye! It is!’ blurted out Daft Wullie. ‘Oh waily waily—’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Tiffany, sniffing and trying to blink the tears away. ‘All right. I understand.’

  The Feegles eyed her cautiously.

  ‘Ye’re nae gonna get nasty aboot it?’ said Rob Anybody.

  ‘No. It all… works.’

  She heard it echo around the cavern, the sound of hundreds of little men sighing with relief.

  ‘She dinnae turn me intae a pismire!’ said Daft Wullie, grinning happily at the rest of the pictsies. ‘Hey, lads, I talked wi’ the hag and she dinnae e’en look at me crosswise! She smiled at me!’ He beamed at Tiffany and went on: ‘An’ d’ye ken, mistress, that if’n you hold the baccy label upside-doon then part o’ the sailor’s bonnet and his ear became a lady wi’ nae mmph mmph…’

  ‘Ach, there I goes again, accidentally nearly throttlin’ ye,’ said Rob Anybody, his hand clamping over Wullie’s mouth.

  Tiffany opened her mouth, but stopped when her ears tickled strangely.

  In the roof of the cave, several bats woke up and hastily flew out of the smoke hole.

  Some of the Feegles were busy on the far side of the chamber. What Tiffany had thought was a strange round stone was being rolled aside, revealing a large hole.

  Now her ears squelched and felt as though all the wax was running out. The Feegles were forming up in two rows, leading to the hole.

  Tiffany prodded the toad. ‘Do I want to know what a pismire is?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s an ant,’ said the toad.

  ‘Oh? I’m… slightly surprised. And this sort of high-pitched noise?’

  ‘I’m a toad. We’re not good at ears. But it’s probably him over there.’

  There was a Feegle walking out of the hole from which cam
e, now that Tiffany’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, a faint golden light.

  The newcomer’s hair was white instead of red and, while he was tall for a pictsie, he was as skinny as a twig. He was holding some sort of fat skin bag, bristling with pipes.

  ‘Now there’s a sight I don’t reckon many humans have seen and lived,’ said the toad. ‘He’s playing the mousepipes!’

  They make my ears tingle!’ Tiffany tried to ignore the two little ears still on the bag of pipes.

  ‘High-pitched, see?’ said the toad. ‘Of course, the pictsies hear sounds differently than humans do. He’s probably their battle poet, too.’

  ‘You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?’

  ‘No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy. Remember how important words are to the Nac Mac Feegle? Well, when a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy’s ears explode. Ah, it looks as though they’re ready for you…’

  In fact Rob Anybody was tapping politely on Tiffany’s toecap. ‘The kelda will see you now, mistress,’ he said.

  The piper had stopped playing and was standing respectfully beside the hole. Tiffany felt hundreds of bright little eyes watching her.

  ‘Special Sheep Liniment,’ whispered the toad.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Take it in with us,’ the toad said insistently. ‘It’d be a good gift!’

  The pictsies watched her carefully as she lay down again and crawled through the hole behind the stone, the toad hanging on tightly. As she got closer she realized that what she’d thought was a stone was an old round shield, green-blue and corroded with age. The hole it had covered was indeed wide enough for her to go through, but she had to leave her legs outside because it was impossible to get all of her into the room beyond. One reason was the bed, small though it was, which held the kelda. The other reason was that what the room was mostly full of, piled up around the walls and spilling across the floor, was gold.

  Chapter 7

  First Sight And Second Thoughts

  Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam…

  Tiffany thought a lot about words, in the long hours of churning butter. ‘Onomatopoeic’, she’d discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the noise of the thing they were describing, like ‘cuckoo’. But she thought there should be a word meaning ‘a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn’t, but would if it did’.

  Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it’d go ‘glint!’ And the light of tinsel, all those little glints chiming together, would make a noise like ‘glitterglitter’. ‘Gleam’ was a clean, smooth noise from a surface that intended to shine all day. And ‘glisten’ was the soft, almost greasy sound of something rich and oily.

  The little cave contained all of these at once. There was only one candle, which smelled of sheep fat, but gold plates and cups gleamed, glistened, glinted and glittered the light back and forth until the one little flame filled the air with a light that even smelled expensive.

  The gold surrounded the bed of the kelda, who was sitting up against a pile of pillows. She was much, much fatter than the male pictsies; she looked as if she’d been made of round balls of slightly squashy dough, and was the colour of chestnuts.

  Her eyes were closed as Tiffany slid in, but they flicked open the moment she’d stopped pulling herself forward. They were the sharpest eyes she’d ever seen, much sharper even than Miss Tick’s.

  ‘So-o… you’ll be Sarah Aching’s wee girl?’ said the kelda.

  ‘Yes. I mean, aye,’ said Tiffany. It wasn’t very comfortable lying on her stomach. ‘And you’re the kelda?’

  ‘Aye. I mean, yes,’ said the kelda, and the round face became a mass of lines as the kelda smiled. ‘What was your name, now?’

  ‘Tiffany, er, Kelda.’ Fion had turned up from some other part of the cave and was sitting down on a stool by the bed, watching Tiffany intently with a disapproving expression.

  ‘A good name. In our tongue you’d be Tir-far-thoinn, Land Under Wave,’ said the kelda. It sounded like ‘Tiffan’.

  ‘I don’t think anyone meant to name—’

  ‘Ach, what people mean to do and what is done are two different things,’ said the kelda. Her little eyes shone. ‘Your wee brother is… safe, child. Ye could say he’s safer where he is noo than he has ever been. No mortal ills can touch him. The Quin would-nae harm a hair o’ his heid. And there’s the evil o’ it. Help me up here, girl.’

  Fion leaped up immediately and helped the kelda struggle up higher amongst her cushions.

  ‘Where wuz I?’ the kelda continued. ‘Ah, the wee laddie. Aye, ye could say he bides well where he is, in the Quin’s own country. But I daresay there’s a mother grievin’?’

  ‘And his father, too,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘An’ his wee sister?’ said the kelda.

  Tiffany felt the words ‘Yes, of course’ trot automatically onto her tongue. She also knew that it would be very stupid to let them go any further. The little old woman’s dark eyes were seeing right into her head.

  ‘Aye, you’re a born hag, right enough,’ said the kelda, holding her gaze. ‘Ye’ve got that little bitty bit inside o’ you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o’ ye. ‘Tis the First Sight and Second Thoughts ye have, and ‘tis a wee gift an’ a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna’, the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye ‘re always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who cannae join in. There’s a little bitty bit inside ye that willnae melt and flow. Ye ‘re Sarah Aching’s line, right enough. The lads fetched the right one.’

  Tiffany didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. The kelda watched her, eyes twinkling, until Tiffany felt awkward.

  ‘Why would the Queen take my brother?’ she asked eventually. ‘And why is she after me?’

  ‘Ye think she is?’

  ‘Well, yes, actually! I mean, Jenny might have been a coincidence, but the horseman? And the grimhounds? And taking Went worth?’

  ‘She’s bending her mind to ye,’ said the kelda. ‘When she does, something of her world passes into this one. Mebbe she just wants to test you.’

  ‘Test me?’

  To see how good you are. Ye’re the hag noo, the witch that guards the edges and the gateways. So wuz yer granny, although she wouldnae ever call hersel’ one. And so wuz I until noo, and I’ll pass the duty to ye. She’ll ha’ to get past ye, if she wants this land. Ye have the First Sight and the Second Thoughts, just like yer granny. That’s rare in a bigjob.’

  ‘Don’t you mean second sight?’ Tiffany queried. ‘Like people who can see ghosts and stuff?’

  ‘Ach, no. That’s typical bigjob thinking. First Sight is when you can see what’s really there, not what your heid tells you ought to be there. Ye saw Jenny, ye saw the horseman, ye saw them as real thingies. Second sight is dull sight, it’s seeing only what you expect to see. Most bigjobs ha’ that. Listen to me, because I’m fadin’ noo and there’s a lot ye dinnae ken. Ye think this is the only world? That is a good thought for sheep and mortals who dinnae open their eyes. Because in truth there are more worlds than stars in the sky. Understand? They are everywhere, big and small, close as your skin. They are everywhere. Some ye can see an’ some ye cannae but there are doors, Tiffan. They might be a hill or a tree or a stone or a turn in the road or they might e’en be a thought in yer heid, but they are there, all aroound ye. You’ll have to learn to see ‘em, because you walk amongst them and dinnae know it. And some of them… is poisonous.’

  The kelda stared at Tiffany for a moment and then continued: ‘Ye asked why the Quin should take your boy? The Quin likes children. She has none o’ her own. She dotes on them. She’ll give the wee boy everything he wants, too. Only what he wants.’

  ‘He only wants sweets!’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Is that so? An’ did ye
gi’ them to him?’ said the kelda, as if she was looking into Tiffany’s mind. ‘But what he needs is love an’ care an’ teachin’ an’ people sayin’ “no” to him sometimes an’ things o’ that nature. He needs to be growed up strong. He willnae get that fra’ the Quin. He’ll get sweeties. For ever.’

  Tiffany wished the kelda would stop looking at her like that.

  ‘But I see he has a sister willin’ to take any pains to bring him back,’ said the little old woman, taking her eyes away from Tiffany. ‘What a lucky wee boy he is, to be so fortunate. Ye ken how to be strong, do ye?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Good. D’ye ken how to be weak? Can ye bow to the gale, can ye bend to the storm?’ The kelda smiled again. ‘Nay, ye neednae answer that. The wee burdie always has tae leap from the nest to see if it can fly. Anyway, ye have the feel o’ Sarah Aching about ye, and no word e’en o’ mine could turn her once she had set her mind to something. Ye’re no’ a woman yet, and that’s no bad thing, because where ye’ll be goin’ is easy for children, hard for adults.’

  The world of the Queen?’ ventured Tiffany, trying to keep up.

  ‘Aye. I can feel it noo, lyin’ over this one like a fog, as far awa’ as the other side o’ a mirror. I’m weakenin’, Tiffan. I cannae defend this place. So here is my bargain, child. I’ll point ye towards the Quin an’, in return, ye’ll tak’ over as kelda.’

  That surprised Fion as much as Tiffany. Her head shot up sharply and her mouth opened, but the kelda had raised a wrinkled hand.

  ‘When ye are a kelda somewhere, my girl, ye’ll expect people to do your biddin’. So dinnae give me the argument. That’s my offer, Tiffan. Ye won’t get a better.’

  ‘But she cannae–’ Fion began.

  ‘Can she not?’ said the kelda.

  ‘She’s nae a pictsie, Mother!’

  ‘She’s a bit on the large side, aye,’ said the kelda. ‘Dinnae fret, Tiffan. It willnae be for long. I just need ye to mind things for a wee while. Mind the land like yer granny did, and mind my boys. Then when yer wee boy is back home, Hamish’ll fly up to the mountains and let it be known that the Chalk Hill clan has want o’ a kelda. We’ve got a good place here, and the girls’ll come flockin’. What d’ye say?’