The Wee Free Men d(-2 Read online

‘Yes?’ said the witch.

  ‘I think you heard me telling the teacher.’

  ‘Correct. I just used my ears,’ said Miss Tick, saying nothing at all about saucers of ink. Tell me about this monster with eyes the size of the kind of soup plates that are eight inches across. Where do soup plates come into it?’

  ‘The monster is mentioned in a book of stories I’ve got,’ explained Tiffany. ‘It said Jenny Green-Teeth has eyes the size of soup plates. There’s a picture, but it’s not a good one. So I measured a soup plate, so I could be exact.’

  Miss Tick put her chin on her hand and gave Tiffany an odd sort of smile.

  ‘That was all right, wasn’t it?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Yes. Um… yes. Very… exact. Go on.’

  Tiffany told her about the fight with Jenny, although she didn’t mention Wentworth in case Miss Tick got funny about it. Miss Tick listened carefully.

  ‘Why the frying pan?’ she said. ‘You could’ve found a stick.’

  ‘A frying pan just seemed a better idea,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Hah! It was. Jenny would’ve eaten you up if you’d used a stick. A frying pan is made of iron. Creatures of that kidney can’t stand iron.’

  ‘But it’s a monster out of a storybook!’ said Tiffany. ‘What’s it doing turning up in our little river?’

  Miss Tick stared at Tiffany for a while, and then said: ‘Why do you want to be a witch, Tiffany?’

  It had started with The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales. Actually, it had probably started with a lot of things, but the stories most of all.

  Her mother had read them to her when she was little, and then she’d read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch.

  And Tiffany had thought: Where’s the evidence?

  The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you had no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch.

  If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about ‘a handsome prince’… was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for ‘a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long’… well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told…

  And you were told that the old witch lived all by herself in a strange cottage made of gingerbread or which ran around on giant hen’s feet, and talked to animals, and could do magic.

  Tiffany only ever knew one old woman who lived all alone in a strange cottage…

  Well, no. That wasn’t quite true. But she had only ever known one old woman who lived in a strange house that moved about, and that was Granny Aching. And she could do magic, sheep magic, and she talked to animals and there was nothing wicked about her. That proved you couldn’t believe the stories.

  And there had been the other old woman, the one who everyone said was a witch. And what had happened to her had made Tiffany very… thoughtful.

  Anyway, she preferred the witches to the smug handsome princes and especially to the stupid smirking princesses, who didn’t have the sense of a beetle. They had lovely golden hair, too, and Tiffany didn’t. Her hair was brown, plain brown. Her mother called it chestnut, or sometimes auburn, but Tiffany knew it was brown, brown, brown, just like her eyes. Brown as earth. And did the book have any adventures for people who had brown eyes and brown hair? No, no, no… it was the blond people with blue eyes and the redheads with green eyes who got the stories. If you had brown hair you were probably just a servant or a woodcutter or something. Or a dairymaid. Well, that was not going to happen, even if she was good at cheese. She couldn’t be the prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be the witch and know things, just like Granny Aching—

  ‘Who was Granny Aching?’ said a voice.

  Who was Granny Aching? People would start asking that now. And the answer was: what Granny Aching was, was there. She was always there. It seemed that the lives of all the Achings revolved around Granny Aching. Down in the village decisions were made, things were done, life went on in the knowledge that in her old wheeled shepherding hut on the hills Granny Aching was there, watching.

  And she was the silence of the hills. Perhaps that’s why she liked Tiffany, in her awkward, hesitant way. Her older sisters chattered, and Granny didn’t like noise. Tiffany didn’t make noise when she was up at the hut. She just loved being there. She’d watch the buzzards, and listen to the noise of the silence.

  It did have a noise, up there. Sounds, voices, animal noises floating up onto the downs, somehow made the silence deep and complex. And Granny Aching wrapped this silence around herself and made room inside it for Tiffany. It was always too busy on the farm. There were a lot of people with a lot to do. There wasn’t enough time for silence. There wasn’t time for listening. But Granny Aching was silent and listened all the time.

  ‘What?’ said Tiffany, blinking.

  ‘You just said “Granny Aching listened to me all the time”,’ said Miss Tick.

  Tiffany swallowed. ‘I think my grandmother was slightly a witch,’ she said, with a touch of pride.

  ‘Really? How do you know?’

  ‘Well, witches can curse people, right?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘So it is said,’ said Miss Tick, diplomatically.

  ‘Well, my father said Granny Aching cussed the sky blue,’ said Tiffany.

  Miss Tick coughed. ‘Well, cussing, now, cussing isn’t like genuine cursing. Cussing’s more like dang and botheration and darned and drat, you know? Cursing is more on the lines of “I hope your nose explodes and your ears go flying away.”’

  ‘I think Granny’s cussing was a bit more than that,’ said Tiffany, in a very definite voice. ‘And she talked to her dogs.’

  ‘And what kind of things did she say to them?’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘Oh, things like come by and away to me and that’ll do,’ said Tiffany. ‘They always did what she told them.’

  ‘But those are just sheepdog commands,’ said Miss Tick, dismissively. ‘That’s not exactly witchcraft.’

  ‘Well, that still makes them familiars, doesn’t it?’ Tiffany retorted, feeling annoyed. ‘Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there.’

  ‘I’m not familiar,’ said a voice from among the paper flowers. ‘I’m just slightly presumptuous.’

  ‘And she knew about all kinds of herbs,’ Tiffany persisted. Granny Aching was going to be a witch even if Tiffany had to argue all day. ‘She could cure anything. My father said she could make a shepherd’s pie stand up and baa.’ Tiffany lowered her voice. ‘She could bring lambs back to life…’

  You hardly ever saw Granny Aching indoors in the spring and summer. She spent most of the year sleeping in the old wheeled hut, which could be dragged across the downs after the flocks. But the first time Tiffany could remember seeing the old woman in the farmhouse, she was kneeling in front of the fire, putting a dead lamb in the big black oven.

  Tiffany had screamed and screamed. And Granny had gently picked her up, a little awkwardly, and sat her on her lap and shushed her and called her ‘my little jiggit’, while on the floor her sheepdogs, Thunder and Lightning, watched her in doggish amazement. Granny wasn’t particularly at home around children, because they didn’t baa.

  When Tiffany had stopped crying out of sheer lack of breath, Granny had put her down on the rug and opened the oven, and Tiffany had watched the lamb come alive again.

  When Tiffany got a little older, she found out that ‘jiggit’ meant twenty in the Yan Tan Tethera, the ancient counting language of the shepherds. The older people still used it when they were counting things they thought of as special. She was Granny Aching’s twentieth grandchild.

  And when she was older she also understood all about the warming oven, which never got mor
e than, well, warm. Her mother would let the bread dough rise in it, and Ratbag the cat would sleep in it, sometimes on the dough. It was just the place to revive a weak lamb that had been born on a snowy night and was near death from the cold. That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

  ‘Good, but still not exactly witchcraft,’ said Miss Tick, breaking the spell again. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to have a witch ancestor to be a witch. It helps, of course, because of heredity.’

  ‘You mean like having talents?’ said Tiffany, wrinkling her brow.

  ‘Tartly, I suppose,’ said Miss Tick. ‘But I was thinking of pointy hats, for example. If you have a grandmother who can pass on her pointy hat to you, that saves a great deal of expense. They are incredibly hard to come by, especially ones strong enough to withstand falling farmhouses. Did Mrs Aching have anything like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tiffany. ‘She hardly ever wore a hat except in the very cold weather. She wore an old grain sack as a sort of hood. Um… does that count?’

  For the first time, Miss Tick looked a little less flinty. ‘Possibly, possibly,’ she said. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters, Tiffany?’

  ‘I have six sisters,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m the youngest. Most of them don’t live with us now.’

  ‘And then you weren’t the baby any more because you had a dear little brother,’ said Miss Tick. ‘The only boy, too. That must have been a nice surprise.’

  Suddenly, Tiffany found Miss Tick’s faint smile slightly annoying.

  ‘How do you know about my brother?’ she said.

  The smile faded. Miss Tick thought: This child is sharp. ‘Just a guess,’ she said. No one likes admitting to spying.

  ‘Are you using persykology on me?’ said Tiffany hotly.

  ‘I think you mean psychology,’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Tiffany. ‘You think I don’t like him because my parents make a fuss of him and spoil him, yes?’

  ‘Well, it did cross my mind,’ said Miss Tick, and gave up worrying about the spying. She was a witch, and that was all there was to it. ‘I think it was the bit when you used him as bait for a slathering monster that gave me a hint,’ she added.

  ‘He’s just a nuisance!’ said Tiffany. ‘He takes up my time and I’m always having to look after him and he always wants sweets. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I had to think fast.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘Granny Aching would have done something about monsters in our river,’ said Tiffany, ignoring that. ‘Even if they are out of books.’ And she’d have done something about what happened to old Mrs Snapperly, she added to herself. She’d have spoken up, and people would have listened… They always listened when Granny spoke up. Speak up for those who don’t have voices, she always said.

  ‘Good,’ said Miss Tick. ‘So she should. Witches deal with things. You said the river was very shallow where Jenny leaped up? And the world looked blurred and shaky? Was there a susurrus?’

  Tiffany beamed. ‘Yes, there certainly was!’

  ‘Ah. Something bad is happening.’

  Tiffany looked worried.

  ‘Can I stop it?’

  ‘And now I’m slightly impressed,’ said Miss Tick. ‘You said, “Can I stop it?”, not “Can anyone stop it?” or “Can we stop it?” That’s good. You accept responsibility. That’s a good start. And you keep a cool head. But, no, you can’t stop it.’

  ‘I walloped Jenny Green-Teeth!’

  ‘Lucky hit,’ said Miss Tick. ‘There may be worse than her on the way, believe me. I believe an incursion of major proportions is going to start here and, clever though you are, my girl, you have as much chance as one of your lambs on a snowy night. You keep clear. I’ll try to fetch help.’

  ‘What, from the Baron?’

  ‘Good gracious, no. He’d be no use at all.’

  ‘But he protects us,’ said Tiffany. ‘That’s what my mother says.’

  ‘Does he?’ said Miss Tick. ‘Who from? I mean, from whom?’

  ‘Well, from, you know… attack, I suppose. From other barons, my father says.’

  ‘Has he got a big army?’

  ‘Well, er, he’s got Sergeant Roberts, and Kevin and Neville and Trevor,’ said Tiffany. ‘We all know them. They mostly guard the castle.’

  ‘Any of them got magical powers?’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘I saw Neville do card tricks once,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘A wow at parties, but probably not much use even against something like Jenny,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Are there no oth—Are there no witches here at all?’

  Tiffany hesitated.

  ‘There was old Mrs Snapperly,’ she said. Oh, yes. She’d lived all alone in a strange cottage all right…

  ‘Good name,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Can’t say I’ve heard it before, though. Where is she?’

  ‘She died in the snow last winter,’ said Tiffany, slowly.

  ‘And now tell me what you’re not telling me,’ said Miss Tick, sharp as a knife.

  ‘Er… she was begging, people think, but no one opened their doors to her and, er… it was a cold night, and… she died.’

  ‘And she was a witch, was she?’

  ‘Everyone said she was a witch,’ said Tiffany. She really did not want to talk about this. No one in the villages around here wanted to talk about it. No one went near the ruins of the cottage in the woods, either.

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Um…’ Tiffany squirmed. ‘You see… the Baron had a son called Roland. He was only twelve, I think. And he went riding in the woods by himself last summer and his dogs came back without him.’

  ‘Mrs Snapperly lived in those woods?’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And people think she killed him?’ said Miss Tick. She sighed. ‘They probably think she cooked him in the oven, or something.’

  ‘They never actually said,’ said Tiffany. ‘But I think it was something like that, yes.’

  ‘And did his horse turn up?’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘And that was strange, because if it’d turned up anywhere along the hills the people would have noticed it…’

  Miss Tick folded her hands, sniffed, and smiled a smile with no humour in it at all.

  ‘Easily explained,’ she said. ‘Mrs Snapperly must have had a really big oven, eh?’

  ‘No, it was really quite small,’ said Tiffany. ‘Only ten inches deep.’

  ‘I bet Mrs Snapperly had no teeth and talked to herself, right?’ said Miss Tick.

  ‘Yes. And she had a cat. And a squint,’ said Tiffany. And it all came out in a rush: ‘And so after he vanished they went to her cottage and they looked in the oven and they dug up her garden and they threw stones at her old cat until it died and they turned her out of her cottage and piled up all her old books in the middle of the room and set fire to them and burned the place to the ground and everyone said she was an old witch.’

  ‘They burned the books,’ said Miss Tick, in a flat voice.

  ‘Because they said they had old writing in them,’ said Tiffany. ‘And pictures of stars.’

  ‘And when you went to look, did they?’ said Miss Tick.

  Tiffany suddenly felt cold. ‘How did you know?’ she said.

  ‘I’m good at listening. Well, did they?’

  Tiffany sighed. ‘Yes, I went to the cottage next day and some of the pages, you know, had kind of floated up in the heat. And I found a part of one, and it had all old lettering and gold and blue edging. And I buried her cat.’

  ‘You buried the cat?’

  ‘Yes! Someone had to!’ said Tiffany hotly.

  ‘And you measured the oven,’ said Miss Tick. ‘I know you did, because you just told me what size it was.’ And you measure soup plates, Miss Tick added to herself. What have I found here?

  ‘Well, yes. I did. I mean… it
was tiny! And if she could magic away a boy and a whole horse, why didn’t she magic away the men who came for her? It didn’t make any sense—!’

  Miss Tick waved her into silence. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Then the Baron said no one was to have anything to do with her,’ said Tiffany. ‘He said any witches found in the country would be tied up and thrown in the pond. Er, you could be in danger,’ she added, uncertainly.

  ‘I can untie knots with my teeth and I have a Gold Swimming Certificate from the Quirm College for Young Ladies,’ said Miss Tick. ‘All that practice at jumping into the swimming pool with my clothes on was time well spent.’ She leaned forward. ‘Let me guess what happened to Mrs Snapperly,’ she said. ‘She lived from the summer until the snow, right? She stole food from barns and probably women gave her food at the back door if the men weren’t around? I expect the bigger boys threw things at her if they saw her.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination, believe me,’ said Miss Tick. ‘And she wasn’t a witch, was she?’

  ‘I think she was just a sick old lady who was no use to anyone and smelled a bit and looked odd because she had no teeth,’ said Tiffany. ‘She just looked like a witch in a story. Anyone with half a mind could see that.’

  Miss Tick sighed. ‘Yes. But sometimes it’s so hard to find half a mind when you need one.’

  ‘Can’t you teach me what I need to know to be a witch?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Tell me why you still want to be a witch, bearing in mind what happened to Mrs Snapperly?’

  ‘So that sort of thing doesn’t happen again,’ said Tiffany.

  She even buried the old witch’s cat, thought Miss Tick. What kind of child is this?

  ‘Good answer. You might make a decent witch one day,’ she said. ‘But I don’t teach people to be witches. I teach people about witches. Witches learn in a special school. I just show them the way, if they’re any good. All witches have special interests, and I like children.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re much easier to fit in the oven,’ said Miss Tick.