The Wee Free Men (3 page)

“Provided it’s not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs,” said the man.

“No,” said Tiffany patiently. “It’s about zoology.”

“Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.”

“No, actually it isn’t,” said Tiffany. “
Patronizing
is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”

The teacher’s eyes narrowed further. Children like Tiffany were bad news. “I can see you’re a clever one,” he said. “But I don’t
know any teachers of zoology in these parts. Vetin’ry, yes, but not zoology. Any particular animal?”

“Jenny Green-Teeth. A water-dwelling monster with big teeth and claws and eyes like soup plates,” said Tiffany.

“What size of soup plates? Do you mean big soup plates, a whole full-portion bowl with maybe some biscuits, possibly even a bread roll, or do you mean the little cup you might get if, for example, you just ordered soup and a salad?”

“The size of soup plates that are eight inches across,” said Tiffany, who’d never ordered soup and a salad anywhere in her life. “I checked.”

“Hmm, that is a puzzler,” said the teacher. “Don’t think I know that one. It’s certainly not useful, I know that. It sounds made-up to me.”

“Yes, that’s what
I
thought,” said Tiffany. “But I’d still like to know more about it.”

“Well, you could try her. She’s new.”

The teacher jerked his thumb toward a little tent at the end of the row. It was black and quite shabby. There weren’t any posters, and absolutely no exclamation marks.

“What does she teach?” Tiffany asked.

“Couldn’t say,” said the teacher. “She
says
it’s thinking, but I don’t know how you teach
that
. That’ll be one carrot, thank you.”

When she went closer, Tiffany saw a small notice pinned to the outside of the tent. It said, in letters that whispered rather than shouted:

I CAN TEACH YOU A LESSON YOU WON’T FORGET IN A HURRY
.

T
iffany read the sign and smiled.

“Aha,” she said. There was nothing to knock on, so she added “Knock, knock” in a louder voice.

A woman’s voice from within said: “Who’s there?”

“Tiffany,” said Tiffany.

“Tiffany who?” said the voice.

“Tiffany who isn’t trying to make a joke.”

“Ah. That sounds promising. Come in.”

She pushed aside the flap. It was dark inside the tent, as well as stuffy and hot. A skinny figure sat behind a small table. She had a very sharp, thin nose and was wearing a large black straw hat with paper flowers on it. It was completely unsuitable for a face like that.

“Are you a witch?” said Tiffany. “I don’t mind if you are.”

“What a strange question to spring on someone,” said the woman, looking slightly shocked. “Your Baron bans witches in this country, you know that, and the first thing you say to me is ‘Are you a witch?’ Why would I be a witch?”

“Well, you’re wearing all black,” said Tiffany.

“Anyone can wear black,” said the woman. “That doesn’t
mean a thing.”

“And you’re wearing a straw hat with flowers in it,” Tiffany went on.

“Aha!” said the woman. “That proves it, then. Witches wear tall pointy hats. Everyone knows that, foolish child.”

“Yes, but witches are also very clever,” said Tiffany calmly. There was something about the twinkle in the woman’s eyes that told her to continue. “They sneak about. Probably they often don’t look like witches. And a witch coming here would know about the Baron, and so she’d wear the kind of hat that everyone knows witches don’t wear.”

The woman stared at her. “That was an incredible feat of reasoning,” she said at last. “You’d make a good witch finder. You know they used to set fire to witches? Whatever kind of hat I’ve got on, you’d say it proves I’m a witch, yes?”

“Well, the frog sitting on your hat is a bit of a clue, too,” said Tiffany.

“I’m a toad, actually,” said the creature, which had been peering at Tiffany from between the paper flowers.

“You’re very yellow for a toad.”

“I’ve been a bit ill,” said the toad.

“And you talk,” said Tiffany.

“You only have my word for it,” said the toad, disappearing into the paper flowers. “You can’t prove anything.”

“You don’t have matches on you, do you?” said the woman to Tiffany.

“No.”

“Fine, fine. Just checking.”

Again there was a pause while the woman gave Tiffany a long stare, as if making up her mind about something.

“My name,” she said at last, “is Miss Tick. And I
am
a witch. It’s a good name for a witch, of course.”

“You mean blood-sucking parasite?” said Tiffany, wrinkling her forehead.

“I’m sorry?” said Miss Tick, coldly.

“Ticks,” said Tiffany. “Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine—”

“I
meant
that it
sounds
like ‘mystic,’” said Miss Tick.

“Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words,” said Tiffany.
*
“In that case it would be even better if you were Miss
Teak
, a dense foreign wood, because that would sound like ‘mystique,’ or you could be Miss Take, which would—”

“I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire,” said Miss Tick. “There may be no survivors.”

“You really
are
a witch?”

“Oh, puh-lease,” said Miss Tick. “Yes, yes, I am a witch. I have a talking animal, a tendency to correct other people’s pronunciation—it’s
pun
, by the way, not ‘pune’—and a fascination for poking my nose into other people’s affairs and, yes,
a pointy hat.
”

“Can I operate the spring now?” said the toad.

“Yes,” said Miss Tick, her eyes still on Tiffany. “You can operate the spring.”

“I like operating the spring,” said the toad, crawling around to the back of the hat.

There was a click, and a slow
thwap-thwap
noise, and the center of the hat rose slowly and jerkily up out of the paper flowers, which fell away.

“Er…” said Tiffany.

“You have a question?” said Miss Tick.

With a last
thwop
, the top of the hat made a perfect point.

“How do you know I won’t run away right now and tell the Baron?” said Tiffany.

“Because you haven’t the slightest desire to do so,” said Miss Tick. “You’re absolutely fascinated. You want to
be
a witch, am I right? You probably want to fly on a broomstick, yes?”

“Oh, yes!” She’d often dreamed of flying. Miss Tick’s next words brought her down to earth.

“Really? You like having to wear really, really thick pants? Believe me, if I’ve got to fly, I wear two pairs of woolen ones and a canvas pair on the outside which, I may tell you, are not very feminine no matter how much lace you sew on. It can get
cold
up there. People forget that. And then there’s the bristles. Don’t ask me about the bristles. I will not talk about the bristles.”

“But can’t you use a keeping-warm spell?” said Tiffany.

“I could. But a witch doesn’t do that sort of thing. Once you use magic to keep yourself warm, then you’ll start using it for other things.”

“But isn’t that what a witch is supposed to—” Tiffany began.

“Once you learn about magic, I mean really
learn
about magic, learn everything you
can
learn about magic, then you’ve got the most important lesson still to learn,” said Miss Tick.

“What’s that?”

“Not to use it. Witches don’t use magic unless they really have to. It’s hard work and difficult to control. We do other things. A witch pays attention to everything that’s going on. A witch uses her head. A witch is sure of herself. A witch always has a piece of string—”

“I always
do
have a piece of string!” said Tiffany. “It’s always handy!”

“Good. Although there’s more to witchcraft than string. A witch delights in small details. A witch sees through things and around things. A witch sees farther than most. A witch sees things from the other side. A witch knows where she is, who she is, and
when
she is. A witch would see Jenny Green-Teeth,” she added. “What happened?”

“How did you know I saw Jenny Green-Teeth?”

“I’m a witch. Guess,” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany looked around the tent. There wasn’t much to see, even now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. The sounds of the outside world filtered through the heavy material.

“I think—”

“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 that was made of gingerbread or 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
….”