The Wee Free Men (19 page)

“But you mustn’t make the Queen angry,” said Roland. “I’ve
seen what happens to people who make her angry. She sets the Bumblebee women on them.”

“Are you talking about those huge women with the tiny wings?”

“Yes! They’ve vicious. And if the Queen gets really angry with someone, she just stares at them, and…they change.”

“Into what?”

“Other things. I don’t want to have to draw you a picture.” Roland shuddered. “And if I did, I’d need a lot of red and purple crayon. Then they get dragged off and left for the dromes.” He shook his head. “Listen, dreams are real here.
Really
real. When you’re inside them you’re not…exactly here. The nightmares are real, too. You can
die
.”

This doesn’t
feel
real, Tiffany told herself. This feels like a dream. I could almost wake up from it.

I must always remember what’s real.

She looked down at her faded blue dress, with the bad stitching around the hem caused by it being let out and taken in as its various owners had grown. That was real.

And she was real. Cheese was real. Somewhere not far away was a world of green turf under a blue sky, and that was real.

The Nac Mac Feegle were real, and once again she wished they were here. There was something about the way they shouted “Crivens!” and attacked everything in sight that was so very comforting.

Roland was probably real.

Almost everything else was really a dream, in a robber world that lived off the real worlds and where time nearly stood still and horrible things could happen at any moment. I don’t want to know anything more about it, she decided. I just want to get my brother and go home, while I’m still angry.

Because when I stop being angry, that’ll be the time to get frightened again, and I’ll be
really
frightened this time. Too frightened to think. As frightened as Sneebs. And I must think….

“The first dream I fell into was like one of mine,” she said. “I’ve had dreams where I wake up and I’m still asleep. But the ballroom, I’ve never—”

“Oh, that was one of mine,” said Roland. “From when I was young. I woke up one night and went down to the big hall and there were all these people with masks on, dancing. It was just so…bright.” He looked wistful for a moment. “That was when my mother was still alive.”

“This one’s a picture from a book I’ve got,” said Tiffany. “She must have got that from me—”

“No, she often uses it,” said Roland. “She likes it. She picks up dreams from everywhere. She collects them.”

Tiffany stood and picked up the frying pan again. “I’m going to see the Queen,” she said.

“Don’t,” said Roland. “You’re the only other real person here except Sneebs, and he’s not very good company.”

“I’m going to get my brother and go home,” said Tiffany flatly.

“I’m not going to come with you, then,” said Roland. “I don’t want to see what she turns you into.”

Tiffany stepped out into the heavy, shadowless light and followed the path up the slope. Giant grasses arched overhead. Here and there more strangely dressed, strangely shaped people turned to watch her but then acted as though she was just a passing wanderer, of no interest whatsoever.

She glanced behind her. In the distance the nut cracker had found a bigger hammer and was getting ready to strike.

“Wanna wanna
wanna
sweetie!”

Tiffany’s head shot around like a weathercock in a tornado. She ran along the path, head down, ready to swing the pan at anything that stood in her way, and burst through a clump of grass into a space lined with daisies. It could well have been a bower. She didn’t bother to check.

Wentworth was sitting on a large, flat stone, surrounded by sweets. Many of them were bigger than he was. Smaller ones were in piles, large ones lay like logs. And they were in every color sweets can be, such as Not-Really-Raspberry Red, Fake-Lemon Yellow, Curiously-Chemical Orange, Some-Kind-of-Acidy Green, and Who-Knows-What Blue.

Tears were falling off his chin in blobs. Since they were landing among the sweets, serious stickiness was already taking place.

Wentworth howled. His mouth was a big red tunnel with the wobbly thing that no one knows the name of bouncing up and down in the back of his throat. He stopped crying only when it was time to either breathe in or die, and even then it was only for one huge sucking moment before the howl came back again.

Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She’d seen it before, at birthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweet deprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took any sweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was
not taking all the rest.
And there were so many sweets
he’d never be able to eat them all.
It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burst into tears.

The only solution at home was to put a bucket over his head until he calmed down, and to take almost all the sweets away. He could deal with a few handfuls at a time.

Tiffany dropped the pan and swept him up in her arms. “It’s
Tiffy,” she whispered. “And we’re going home.”

And this is where I meet the Queen, she thought. But there was no scream of rage, no explosion of magic…nothing.

There was just the buzz of bees in the distance, and the sound of wind in the grass, and the gulping of Wentworth, who was too shocked to cry.

She could see now that the far side of the bower contained a couch of leaves, surrounded by hanging flowers. But there was no one there.

“That’s because I’m behind you,” said the voice of the Queen in her ear.

Tiffany turned around quickly.

There was no one there.

“
Still
behind you,” said the Queen. “This is
my
world, child. You’ll never be as fast as me, or as clever as me. Why are you trying to take my boy away?”

“He isn’t yours! He’s ours!” said Tiffany.

“You never loved him. You have a heart like a little snowball. I can see it.”

Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. “Love?” she said. “What’s that got to do with it? He’s my
brother
!
My
brother!”

“Yes, that’s a very witchy thing, isn’t it,” said the voice of the Queen. “Selfishness? Mine, mine, mine? All a witch cares about is what’s
hers
.”

“You stole him!”

“Stole? You mean you thought you
owned
him?”

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: She’s finding your weaknesses. Don’t listen to her.

“Ah, you have Second Thoughts,” said the Queen. “I expect you think that makes you very witchy, do you?”

“Why won’t you let me see you?” said Tiffany. “Are you frightened?”

“Frightened?” said the voice of the Queen. “Of something like
you
?”

And the Queen was there, in front of her. She was much taller than Tiffany, but just as slim; her hair was long and black, her face pale, her lips cherry red, her dress black and white and red. And it was all, very slightly, wrong.

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: It’s because she’s perfect. Completely perfect. Like a doll. No one real is as perfect as that.

“That’s not you,” said Tiffany, with absolute certainty. “That’s just your dream of you. That’s not you at all.”

The Queen’s smile disappeared for a moment and came back all edgy and brittle.

“Such rudeness, and you hardly know me,” she said, sitting down on the leafy seat. She patted the space beside her.

“Do sit down,” she said. “Standing there like that is so confrontational. I will put your bad manners down to simple disorientation.” She gave Tiffany a beautiful smile.

Look at the way her eyes move, said Tiffany’s Second Thoughts. I don’t think she’s using them to see you with. They’re just beautiful ornaments.

“You have invaded my home, killed some of my creatures, and generally acted in a mean and despicable way,” said the Queen. “This offends me. However, I understand that you have been badly led by disruptive elements—”

“You stole my brother,” said Tiffany, holding Wentworth tightly. “You steal all sorts of things.” But her voice sounded weak and tinny in her ears.

“He was wandering around lost,” said the Queen calmly. “I
brought him home and comforted him.”

And what there was about the Queen’s voice was this: It said, in a friendly, understanding way, that she was right and you were wrong. And this wasn’t your fault, exactly. It was probably the fault of your parents, or your food, or something so terrible you’ve completely forgotten about it. It wasn’t
your
fault, the Queen understood, because
you
were a nice person. It was just such a terrible thing that all these bad influences had made you make the wrong choices. If only you’d admit that, Tiffany, then the world would be a much happier place—

—this cold place, guarded by monsters, in a world where nothing grows older, or up, said her Second Thoughts. A world with the Queen in charge of everything. Don’t listen.

She managed to take a step backward.

“Am I a monster?” said the Queen. “All I wanted was a little bit of company.”

And Tiffany’s Second Thoughts, quite swamped by the Queen’s wonderful voice, said: Miss Female Infant Robinson…

She’d come to work as a maid at one of the farms many years ago. They said that she’d been brought up in a Home for the Destitute in Yelp. They said she’d been born there after her mother had arrived during a terrible storm and the master had written in his big black diary: “To Miss Robinson, female infant,” and her young mother hadn’t been very bright and was dying in any case and had thought that was the baby’s name. After all, it had been written down in an official book.

Miss Robinson was quite old now, never said much, never ate much, but you never saw her not doing something. No one could scrub a floor like Miss Female Infant Robinson. She had a thin, wispy face with a pointed red nose, and thin, pale hands with red knuckles, which were
always busy. Miss Robinson worked hard.

Tiffany hadn’t understood a lot of what was going on when the crime happened. The women talked about it in twos and threes at garden gates, their arms folded, and they’d stop and look indignant if a man walked past.

She picked up bits of conversation, though sometimes they seemed to be in a kind of code, like: “Never really had anyone of her own, poor old soul. Wasn’t her fault she was skinnier’n a rake,” and “They say that when they found her, she was cuddling it and said it was hers,” and “The house was full of baby clothes she’d knitted!” That last one had puzzled Tiffany at the time, because it was said in the same tone of voice that someone’d use to say, “And the house was full of human skulls!”

But they all agreed on one thing: We can’t have this. A crime’s a crime. The Baron’s got to be told.

Miss Robinson had stolen a baby, Punctuality Riddle, who had been much loved by his young parents even though they’d named him Punctuality (reasoning that if children could be named after virtues like Patience, Faith, and Prudence, what was wrong with a little good time-keeping?).

He’d been left in his crib in the yard and had vanished. And there had been all the usual searchings and weepings, and then someone had mentioned that Miss Robinson had been taking home extra milk.

It was kidnaping. There weren’t many fences on the Chalk, and very few doors with locks. Theft of all kinds was taken very seriously. If you couldn’t turn your back on what was yours for five minutes, where would it all end? The law’s the law. A crime’s a crime.

Tiffany had overheard bits of arguments all over the village, but the same phrases cropped up over and over again. Poor thing never meant no harm. She was a hard worker, never complained. She’s not right in the head. The law’s the law. A crime’s a crime.

And so the Baron was told, and he held a court in the Great Hall, and everyone who wasn’t wanted up on the hills turned up, including Mr. and Mrs. Riddle, she looking worried, he looking determined, and Miss Robinson, who just stared at the ground with her red-knuckled hands on her knees.

It was hardly a trial. Miss Robinson was confused about what she was accused of, and it seemed to Tiffany that so was everyone else. They weren’t certain why they were there, and they’d come to find out.

The Baron had been uneasy, too. The law was clear. Theft was a dreadful crime, and stealing a human being was much worse. There was a prison in Yelp, right beside the Home for the Destitute; some said there was even a connecting door. That was where thieves went.

And the Baron wasn’t a big thinker. His family had held the Chalk by not changing their mind about anything for hundreds of years. He sat and listened and drummed his fingers on the table and looked at people’s faces and acted like a man sitting on a very hot chair.

Tiffany was in the front row. She was there when the man started to give his verdict, umming and ahhing, trying not to say the words he knew he’d have to say, when the door at the back of the hall opened and the sheepdogs Thunder and Lightning trotted in.

They came down the aisle between the rows of benches and sat down in front of the Baron, looking bright-eyed and alert.

Only Tiffany craned to see back up the aisle. The doors were still slightly ajar. They were far too heavy even for a strong dog to push them open. And she could just make out someone looking through the crack.

The Baron stopped and stared. He, too, looked at the other end of the hall.