The Wee Free Men (15 page)

“And we did that, an’ then she threw us oout on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stealin’ and fightin’ a’ the time,” said Daft Wullie.

“It wasna like that at a’!” roared Rob Anybody.

“And you were waiting to see if I
could
find the way, right?” said Tiffany, before a fight could start.

“Aye. Ye did well, lassie.”

Tiffany shook her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t do any real magic. I don’t know how. I just looked at things and worked them out. It was cheating, really.”

The pictsies looked at one another.

“Ah, weel,” said Rob Anybody. “What’s magic, eh? Just wavin’ a stick an’ sayin’ a few wee magical words. An’ what’s so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin’ at things, really
lookin’
at ’em, and then workin’ ’em oout, now, that’s a
real
skill.”

“Aye, it is,” said William the gonnagle, to Tiffany’s surprise. “Ye
used yer eyes and used yer heid. That’s what a real hag does. The magicking is just there for advertisin’.”

“Oh,” said Tiffany, cheering up. “Really? Well, then…there’s our door, everyone!”

“Right,” said Rob Anybody. “Now show us the way through.”

Tiffany hesitated and then thought: I can feel myself thinking. I’m
watching
the way I’m thinking. And what am I thinking? I’m thinking: I walked through this arch before, and nothing happened.

But I wasn’t looking then. I wasn’t thinking, either. Not properly.

The world I can see through the arch isn’t actually real. It just looks as though it is. It’s a sort of…magical picture, put there to disguise the entrance. And if you don’t pay attention, well, you just walk in and out of it and you don’t realize it.

Aha…

She walked through the arch. Nothing happened. The Nac Mac Feegle watched her solemnly.

Okay
, she thought. I’m still being fooled, aren’t I?…

She stood in front of the stones and stretched out her hands on either side of her, and shut her eyes. Very slowly she stepped forward…

Something crunched under her boots, but she didn’t open her eyes until she couldn’t feel the stones anymore. When she did open them…

…it was a black-and-white landscape.

“A
ye, she’s got First Sight, sure enough,” said William’s voice behind Tiffany as she stared into the world of the Queen. “She’s seein’ what’s really there….”

Snow stretched away under a sky so dirty white that Tiffany might have been standing inside a Ping-Pong ball. Only black trunks and scribbly branches of the trees, here and there, told her where the land stopped and the sky began.

Those, and, of course, the hoofprints. They stretched away toward a forest of black trees, boughed with snow.

The cold was like little needles all over her skin.

She looked down and saw the Nac Mac Feegle pouring through the gate, waist deep in the snow. They spread out without speaking. Some of them had drawn their swords.

They weren’t laughing and joking now. They were watchful.

“Right, then,” said Rob Anybody. “Well done. You wait here for us and we’ll get your wee brother back, nae problemo—”

“I’m coming too!” snapped Tiffany.

“Nay, the kelda disna—”

“This one dis!” said Tiffany, shivering. “I mean does! He’s my brother. And where are we?”

Rob Anybody glanced up at the pale sky. There was no sun anywhere. “Ye’re here noo,” he said, “so mebbe there’s nae harm in tellin’ ye. This is what ye call Fairyland.”

“
Fairyland?
No, it’s not! I’ve seen pictures! Fairyland is…is all trees and flowers and sunshine and, and tinklyness! Dumpy little babies in romper suits with horns! People with wings! Er…and weird people! I’ve seen pictures!”

“It isna always like this,” said Rob Anybody shortly. “An’ ye canna come wi’ us because ye ha’ nae weapon, mistress.”

“What happened to my frying pan?” said Tiffany.

Something bumped against her heels. She looked around and saw Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock hold up the pan triumphantly.

“Okay, ye have the pan,” said Rob Anybody, “but what ye need here is a sword of thunderbolt iron. That’s like the, you know, official weapon for invadin’ Fairyland….”

“I know how to use the pan,” said Tiffany. “And I’m—”

“Incomin’!” yelled Daft Wullie.

Tiffany saw a line of black dots in the distance and felt someone climb up her back and stand on her head.

“It’s the black dogs,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock announced. “Dozens o’ ’em, Big Man.”

“We’ll never outrun the dogs!” Tiffany cried, grabbing her pan.

“Dinna need to,” said Rob Anybody. “We got the gonnagle wi’ us this time. Ye might like to stick yer fingers in yer ears, though.”

William, with his eyes fixed on the approaching pack, was unscrewing some of the pipes from the mousepipes and putting them in a bag he carried hanging from his shoulder.

The dogs were much closer now. Tiffany could see the razor teeth and the burning eyes.

Slowly William took out some much shorter, smaller pipes that had a silvery look to them and screwed them into place. He had the look of someone who wasn’t going to rush.

Tiffany gripped the handle of her pan. The dogs weren’t barking. It would have been slightly less scary if they were.

William swung the mousepipes under his arm and blew into one until the bag bulged.

“I shall play,” he announced, as the dogs got close enough for Tiffany to see the drool, “that firrrrm favorite, ‘The King Underrrr Waterrrr.’”

As one pictsie, the Nac Mac Feegle dropped their swords and put their hands over their ears.

William put the mouthpiece to his lips, tapped his foot once or twice, and, as a dog gathered itself to leap at Tiffany, began to play.

A lot of things happened at more or less the same time. All Tiffany’s teeth started to buzz. The pan vibrated in her hands and dropped onto the snow. The dog in front of her went cross-eyed and, instead of leaping, tumbled forward.

The grimhounds paid no attention to the pictsies. They howled. They spun around. They tried to bite their own tails. They stumbled and ran into one another. The line of panting death broke into dozens of desperate animals, twisting and writhing and trying to escape from their own skins.

The snow was melting in a circle around William, whose cheeks were red with effort. Steam was rising.

He took the pipe from his mouth. The grimhounds, struggling in the slush, raised their heads. And then, as one dog, they put their tails between their legs and ran like greyhounds back across the snow.

“Weel, they ken we’re here noo,” said Rob Anybody, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Ot aggened?” said Tiffany, touching her teeth to check that they were all still there.

“He played the notes o’ pain,” Rob Anybody explained. “Ye canna hear ’em ’cause they’re pitched so high, but the doggies can. Hurts ’em in their heids. Now we’d better get movin’ before she sends somethin’ else.”

“The Queen sent them? But they’re like something out of nightmares!” said Tiffany.

“Oh aye,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s where she got them.”

Tiffany looked at William the gonnagle. He was calmly replacing the pipes. He saw her staring at him, looked up, and winked.

“The Nac Mac Feegle tak’ music verrrrrra seriously,” he said. And then he nodded at the snow near Tiffany’s foot.

There was a sugary yellow teddy bear in the snow, made of 100% Artificial Additives.

And the snow, all around Tiffany, was melting away.

Two pictsies carried Tiffany easily. She skimmed across the snow, the clan running beside her.

No sun in the sky
. Even on the dullest days you could generally see where the sun was, but not here. And there was something else that was strange, something she couldn’t quite give a name to. This didn’t feel like a real place. She didn’t know why she felt that, but something was wrong with the horizon. It looked close enough to touch, which was silly.

And things were not…finished. Like the trees in the forest they were heading toward, for example. A tree is a tree, she thought. Close up or far away, it’s a tree. It has bark and branches and roots.
And you know they’re
there
, even if the tree is so far away that it’s a blob.

The trees here, though, were different. She had a strong feeling that they
were
blobs, and were growing the roots and twigs and other details as she got closer, as if they were thinking, “Quick, someone’s coming! Look real!”

It was like being in a painting where the artist hadn’t bothered much with the things in the distance, but quickly rushed a bit of realness anywhere you were looking.

The air was cold and dead, like the air in old cellars.

The light grew dimmer as they reached the forest. In between the trees it became blue and eerie.

No birds, she thought.

“Stop,” she said.

The pictsies lowered her to the ground, but Rob Anybody said: “We shouldna hang aroound here too long. Heids up, lads.”

Tiffany lifted out the toad. It blinked at the snow.

“Oh, shoap,” it muttered. “This is not good. I should be hibernating.”

“Why is everything so…strange?”

“Can’t help you there,” said the toad. “I just see snow, I just see ice, I just see freezing to death. I’m listening to my inner toad here.”

“It’s not that cold!”

“Feels cold…to…me….” The toad shut his eyes. Tiffany sighed and lowered him into her pocket.

“I’ll tell ye where ye are,” said Rob Anybody, his eyes still scanning the blue shadows. “Ye ken them wee bitty bugs that cling on to the sheeps and suck theirsel’ full o’ blood and then drop off again? This whole world is like one o’ them.”

“You mean like a, a tick? A parasite? A
vampire
?”

“Oh, aye. It floats aroound until it finds a place that’s weak on a world where no one’s payin’ attention, and opens a door. Then the Quin sends in her folk. For the stealin’, ye ken. Raidin’ o’ barns, rustlin’ of cattle—”

“We used to like stealin’ the coo beasties,” said Daft Wullie.

“Wullie,” said Rob Anybody, pointing his sword, “you ken I said there wuz times you should
think
before opening yer big fat gob?”

“Aye, Rob.”

“Weel, that wuz one o’ them times.” Rob turned and looked up at Tiffany rather bashfully. “Aye, we wuz wild champion robbers for the Quin,” he said. “People wouldna e’en go a-huntin’ for fear o’ little men. But ’twas ne’er enough for her. She always wanted more. But we said it’s no’
right
to steal an ol’ lady’s only pig, or the food from them as dinna ha’ enough to eat. A Feegle has nae worries about stealin’ a golden cup from a rich bigjob, ye ken, but takin’ awa’ the—”

—cup an old man kept his false teeth in made them feel ashamed, they said. The Nac Mac Feegle would fight and steal, certainly, but who wanted to fight the weak and steal from the poor?

Tiffany listened, at the end of the shadowy wood, to the story of a little world where nothing grew, where no sun shone, and where everything had to come from somewhere else. It was a world that took, and gave nothing back except fear. It raided—and people learned to stay in bed when they heard strange noises at night, because if anyone gave her trouble, the Queen could control their dreams.

Tiffany couldn’t quite pick up how she did this, but that’s where things like the grimhounds and the headless horseman came from. These dreams were…more real. The Queen could take dreams
and make them more…solid. You could step inside them and vanish. And you didn’t wake up just as the monsters caught up with you.

The Queen’s people wouldn’t just take food. They’d take people, too—

“—like pipers,” said William the gonnagle. “Fairies can’t make music, ye ken. She’ll steal a man awa’ for the music he makes.”

“And she takes children,” said Tiffany.

“Aye. Your wee brother’s not the first,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s no’ a lot of fun and laughter here, ye ken. She thinks she’s good wi’ children.”

“The old kelda said she wouldn’t harm him,” said Tiffany. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big, simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page. What they were thinking turned up right there on their faces, and now they were all wearing a look that said: Crivens, I hope she disna ask us the question we dinna want tae answer….

“That
is
true, isn’t it?” she said.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody, slowly. “She didna lie to ye there. The Quin’ll try to be kind to him, but she disna know how. She’s an elf. They’re no’ very good at thinking of other people.”

“What will happen to him if we don’t get him back?”

Again there was that “we dinna like the way this is going” look.

“I
said—
” Tiffany repeated.

“I darrresay she’ll send him back, in due time,” said William. “An’ he willna be any olderr. Nothing grows old here. Nothing grows. Nothing at all.”

“So he’ll be all right?”

Rob Anybody made a noise in his throat. It sounded like a voice that was trying to say aye but was being argued with by a brain that knew the answer was no.

“Tell me what you’re not telling me,” said Tiffany.

Daft Wullie was the first to speak. “That’s a lot o’ stuff,” he said. “For example, the meltin’ point o’ lead is—”

“Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,” said Rob Anybody quickly. “Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months
here
, ye ken, where the time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ’cause that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad—ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again.”

Tiffany stared at him.

“It’s happened before,” said William.

“I
will
get him back,” said Tiffany quietly.

“We doon’t doubt it,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ where’er ye go, we’ll come with ye. The Nac Mac Feegle are afeared o’ nothing!”

A cheer went up, but it seemed to Tiffany that the blue shadows sucked all the sound away.

“Aye, nothin’ exceptin’ lawyers mmph mmph,” Daft Wullie tried to say, before Rob managed to shut him up.

Tiffany turned back to the line of hoofprints and began to walk.

The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot.

She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around.

All the Nac Mac Feegle were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through.

The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit
something
.

She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree, and just for a moment there was nothing but grayness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time.

It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was…frightening.

She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was…not connected. She
watched
herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t.

The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful.

And that was where it went wrong. Fear gripped her, all at once. She was in a strange world, with monsters, being followed by hundreds of little blue thieves. And…black dogs. Headless horsemen. Monsters in the river. Sheep whizzing backward across fields. Voices under the bed…