The Wee Free Men (5 page)

“Will it cost me anything?”

“What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick.

“Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany.

Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

“Good. Now…if you trust in yourself…”

“Yes?”

“…and believe in your dreams…”

“Yes?”

“…and follow your star…” Miss Tick went on.

“Yes?”

“…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent
their
time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Good-bye.”

The tent seemed to grow darker. It was time to leave. Tiffany found herself back in the square where the other teachers were taking down their stalls.

She didn’t look around. She knew enough not to look around. Either the tent would still be there, which would be a disappointment, or it would have mysteriously disappeared, and that would be worrying.

She headed home and wondered if she should have mentioned the little red-haired men. She hadn’t for a whole lot of reasons. She wasn’t sure, now, that she’d really seen them, she had a feeling that they wouldn’t have wanted her to, and it was nice to have something Miss Tick didn’t know. Yes. That was the best part. Miss Tick was a bit too clever, in Tiffany’s opinion.

On the way home she climbed to the top of Arken Hill, which
was just outside the village. It wasn’t very big, not even as high as the downs above the farm and certainly nothing like as high as the mountains.

The hill was more…modest. There was a flat place at the top where nothing ever grew, and Tiffany knew there was a story that a hero had once fought a dragon up there and its blood had burned the ground where it fell. There was another story that said there was a heap of treasure under the hill,
defended
by the dragon, and
another
story that said a king was buried there in armor of solid gold. There were lots of stories about the hill; it was surprising it hadn’t sunk under the weight of them.

Tiffany stood on the bare soil and looked at the view.

She could see the village and the river and Home Farm and the Baron’s castle, and beyond the fields she knew, she could see gray woods and heathlands.

She closed her eyes and opened them again. And blinked, and opened them
again.

There was no magic door, no hidden building revealed, no strange signs.

For a moment, though, the air buzzed and smelled of snow.

When she got home, she looked up
incursion
in the dictionary. It meant “invasion.”

An incursion of major proportions, Miss Tick had said.

And now little unseen eyes watched Tiffany from the top of the shelf….

M
iss Tick removed her hat, reached inside, and pulled a piece of string. With little clicks and flapping noises the hat took up the shape of a rather elderly straw hat. She picked up the paper flowers from the ground and stuck them on, carefully.

Then she said: “Phew!”

“You can’t just let the kid go like that,” said the toad, who was sitting on the table.

“Like what?”

“She’s clearly got First Sight
and
Second Thoughts. That’s a powerful combination.”

“She’s a little know-it-all,” said Miss Tick.

“Right. Just like you. She impressed you, right? I know she did because you were quite nasty to her, and you always do that to people who impress you.”

“Do you want to be turned into a frog?”

“Well, now, let me see…” said the toad sarcastically. “Better skin, better legs, likelihood of being kissed by a princess one hundred percent improved…why, yes. Whenever you’re ready, madam.”

“There’re worse things than being a toad,” said Miss Tick darkly.

“Try it sometime,” said the toad. “Anyway, I rather liked her.”

“So did I,” said Miss Tick briskly. “She hears about an old lady dying because these idiots thought she was a witch, and
she
decides to become a witch so that they don’t try that again. A monster roars up out of her river, and she bashes it with a frying pan! Have you ever heard the saying ‘The land finds its witch’? It’s happened here, I’ll bet. But a
chalk
witch? Witches like granite and basalt, hard rock all the way down! Do you know what chalk
is
?”

“You’re going to tell me,” said the toad.

“It’s the shells of billions and billions of tiny, helpless little sea creatures that died millions of years ago,” said Miss Tick. “It’s…tiny, tiny bones. Soft. Soggy. Damp. Even limestone is better than that. But…she’s grown up on chalk and
she
is hard, and sharp, too. She’s a born witch. On
chalk
! Which is
impossible
!”

“She bashed Jenny!” said the toad. “The girl has got talent!”

“Maybe, but she needs more than that. Jenny isn’t clever,” said Miss Tick. “She’s only a Grade 1 Prohibitory Monster. And she was probably bewildered to find herself in a stream, when her natural home is in stagnant water. There’ll be much, much worse than her.”

“What do you mean, ‘a Grade 1 Prohibitory Monster’?” asked the toad. “I’ve never heard her called that.”

“I
am
a teacher as well as a witch,” said Miss Tick, adjusting her hat carefully. “Therefore I make lists. I make assessments. I write things down in a neat, firm hand with pens of two colors. Jenny is one of a number of creatures invented by adults to scare children away from dangerous places.” She sighed. “If only people would
think
before they make up monsters.”

“You ought to stay and help her,” said the toad.

“I’ve got practically no power here,” said Miss Tick. “I told you. It’s the chalk. And remember the redheaded men. A Nac Mac
Feegle
spoke
to her!
Warned
her! I’ve never seen one in my life! If she’s got
them
on her side, who knows what she can do?”

She picked up the toad. “D’you know what’ll be turning up?” she continued. “All the things they locked away in those old stories. All those reasons why you shouldn’t stray off the path, or open the forbidden door, or say the wrong word, or spill the salt. All the stories that gave children nightmares. All the monsters from under the biggest bed in the world. Somewhere, all stories are real and all dreams come true. And they’ll come true here if they’re not stopped. If it wasn’t for the Nac Mac Feegle, I’d be really worried. As it is, I’m going to try and get some help. That’s going to take me at least two days without a broomstick!”

“It’s unfair to leave her alone with them,” said the toad.

“She won’t be alone,” said Miss Tick. “She’ll have you.”

“Oh,” said the toad.

Tiffany shared a bedroom with Fastidia and Hannah. She woke up when she heard them come to bed, and she lay in the dark until she heard their breathing settle down and they started to dream of young sheep shearers with their shirts off.

Outside, summer lightning flashed around the hills, and there was a rumble of thunder….

Thunder and Lightning. She knew them as dogs before she knew them as the light and sound of a storm. Granny always had her sheepdogs with her, indoors and out. One moment they would be black-and-white streaks across the distant turf, and then they were suddenly there, panting, eyes never leaving Granny’s face. Half the dogs on the hills were Lightning’s puppies, trained by Granny Aching.

Tiffany had gone with the family to the big Sheepdog Trials. Every
shepherd on the Chalk went to them, and the very best entered the arena to show how well they could work their dogs. The dogs would round up sheep, separate them, drive them into the pens—or sometimes run off, or snap at one another, because even the best dog can have a bad day. But Granny never entered with Thunder and Lightning. She’d lean on the fence with the dogs lying in front of her, watching the show intently and puffing her foul pipe. And Tiffany’s father had said that after each shepherd had worked his dogs, the judges would look nervously across at Granny Aching to see what she thought. In fact all the shepherds watched her. Granny never, ever entered the arena, because she
was
the Trials. If Granny thought you were a good shepherd—if she nodded at you when you walked out of the arena, if she puffed at her pipe and said, “That’ll do”—you walked like a giant for a day, you owned the Chalk….

When she was small and up on the wold with Granny, Thunder and Lightning would baby-sit Tiffany, lying attentively a few feet away as she played. And she’d been so proud when Granny had let her use them to round up a flock. She’d run about excitedly in all directions, shouting “Come by!” and “There!” and “Walk up!” and, glory be, the dogs had worked perfectly.

She knew now that they’d have worked perfectly whatever she’d shouted. Granny was just sitting there, smoking her pipe, and by now the dogs could read her mind. They only ever took orders from Granny Aching….

The storm died down after a while, and there was the gentle sound of rain.

At some point Ratbag the cat pushed open the door and jumped onto the bed. He was big to start with, but Ratbag
flowed.
He was so fat that, on any reasonably flat surface, he gradually spread out in a great puddle of fur. He hated Tiffany but would
never let personal feelings get in the way of a warm place to sleep.

She must have slept, because she woke up when she heard the voices.

They seemed very close but, somehow, very small.

“Crivens! It’s a’ verra well sayin’ ‘find the hag,’ but what should we be lookin’ for, can ye tell me that? All these bigjobs look just the same tae me!”

“Not-totally-wee Geordie doon at the fishin’ said she was a big, big girl!”

“A great help that is, I dinna think! They’re all big, big girls!”

“Ye paira dafties! Everyone knows a hag wears a pointy bonnet!”

“So they canna be a hag if they’re sleepin’, then?”

“Hello?” whispered Tiffany.

There was silence, embroidered with the breathing of her sisters. But in a way Tiffany couldn’t quite describe, it was the silence of people trying hard not to make any noise.

She leaned down and looked under the bed. There was nothing there but the guzunder.

The little man in the river had talked just like that.

She lay back in the moonlight, listening until her ears ached.

Then she wondered what the school for witches would be like and why she hadn’t seen it yet.

She knew every inch of the country for two miles around. She liked the river best, with the backwaters where striped pike sun-bathed just above the weeds and the banks where kingfishers nested. There was a heronry a mile or so upriver, and she liked to creep up on the birds when they came down here to fish in the reeds, because there’s nothing funnier than a heron trying to get airborne in a hurry.

She drifted off to sleep again, thinking about the land around
the farm. She knew all of it. There were no secret places that she didn’t know about.

But maybe there were magical doors. That’s what she’d make, if she had a magical school. There should be secret doorways everywhere, even hundreds of miles away. Look at a special rock by, say, moonlight, and there would be yet another door.

But the school, now, the school. There would be lessons in broomstick riding and how to sharpen your hat to a point, and magical meals, and lots of new friends.

“Is the bairn asleep?”

“Aye, I canna hear her movin’.”

Tiffany opened her eyes in the darkness. The voices under the bed had a slightly echoey edge. Thank goodness the guzunder was nice and clean.

“Right, let’s get oot o’ this wee pot, then.”

The voices moved off across the room. Tiffany’s ears tried to swivel to follow them.

“Hey, see here, it’s a hoose! See, with wee chairies and things!”

They’ve found the doll’s house, Tiffany thought.

It was quite a large one, made by Mr. Block the farm carpenter when Tiffany’s oldest sister, who already had two babies of her own now, was a little girl. It wasn’t the most fragile of items. Mr. Block did not go in for delicate work. But over the years the girls had decorated it with bits of material and some rough-and-ready furniture.

By the sound of it the owners of the voices thought it was a palace.

“Hey, hey, hey, we’re in the cushy stuff noo! There’s a beid in this room. Wi’ pillows!”

“Keep it doon—we don’t want any o’ them to wake up!”

“Crivens, I’m as quiet as a wee moose! Aargh! There’s sojers!”

“Whut d’ye mean, sojers?”

“There’s redcoats in the room!”

They’ve found the toy soldiers, thought Tiffany, trying not to breathe loudly.

Strictly speaking, they had no place in the doll’s house, but Wentworth wasn’t old enough for them, and so they’d got used as innocent bystanders back in those days when Tiffany had made tea parties for her dolls. Well, what passed for dolls. Such toys as there were in the farmhouse had to be tough to survive intact through the generations and didn’t always manage it. Last time Tiffany had tried to arrange a party, the guests had been a rag doll with no head, two wooden soldiers, and three quarters of a small teddy bear.

Thuds and bangs came from the direction of the doll’s house.

“I got one! Hey, pal, can yer mammie sew? Stitch this! Aargh! He’s got a heid on him like a tree!”

“Crivens! There’s a body here wi’ no heid at a’!”

“Aye, nae wonder, ’cause here’s a bear! Feel ma boot, ye washoon!”

It seemed to Tiffany that although the owners of the three voices were fighting things that couldn’t possibly fight back, including a teddy bear with only one leg, the fight still wasn’t going all one way.

“I got ’im! I got ’im! I got ’im! Yer gonna get a gummer, ye wee hard disease!”

“Someone bit ma leg! Someone bit ma leg!”

“Come here! Ach, yer fightin’ yersels, ye eejits! Ah’m fed up wi’ the pairy yees!”

Tiffany felt Ratbag stir. He might be fat and lazy, but he was lightning fast when it came to leaping on small creatures. She
couldn’t let him get the…whatever they were, however bad they sounded.

She coughed loudly.

“See?”
said a voice from the doll’s house.
“Yer woked them up! Ah’m offski!”

Silence fell again, and this time, Tiffany decided after a while, it was the silence of no one there rather than the silence of people being incredibly quiet. Ratbag went back to sleep, twitching occasionally as he disemboweled something in his fat cat dreams.

Tiffany waited a little while and then got out of bed and crept toward the bedroom door, avoiding the two squeaky floorboards. She went downstairs in the dark, found a chair by moonlight, fished the book of fairy tales off Granny’s shelf, then lifted the latch on the back door and stepped out into the warm midsummer night.

There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overhead and there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because she’d read in the Almanack that
gibbous
meant what the moon looked like when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to herself: “Ah, I see the moon’s very gibbous tonight….”

It’s possible that this tells you more about Tiffany than she would want you to know.

Against the rising moon the downs were a black wall that filled half the sky. For a moment she looked for the light of Granny Aching’s lantern….

Granny never lost a lamb. That was one of Tiffany’s first memories: of being held by her mother at the window one frosty night in early spring,
with a million brilliant stars glinting over the mountains and, on the darkness of the downs, the one yellow star in the constellation of Granny Aching zigzagging through the night. She wouldn’t go to bed while a lamb was lost, however bad the weather….