The Wee Free Men

Chapter 4 The Wee Free Men

Nothing happened on the way back to the farm. The sky stayed blue, none of the sheep in the home paddocks appeared to be travelling backwards very fast, and an air of hot emptiness lay over everything. Ratbag was on the path leading up to the back door, and he had something trapped in his paws. As soon as he saw Tiffany he picked it up and exited around the corner of the house at high speed, legs spinning in the high-speed slink of a guilty cat. Tiffany was too good a shot with a clod of earth.

But at least there wasn’t something red and blue in his mouth.

‘Look at him,’ she said. ‘Great cowardly blob! I really wish I could stop him catching baby birds, it’s so sad!’

‘You haven’t got a hat you can wear, have you?’ said the toad, from her apron pocket. ‘I hate not being able to see.’

They went into the dairy, which Tiffany normally had to herself for most of the day.

In the bushes by the door there was a muffled conversation. It went like this:

‘Whut did the wee hag say?’

‘She said she wants yon cat to stop scraffin’ the puir wee burdies.’

‘Is that a’? Crivens! Nae problemo!’

Tiffany put the toad on the table as carefully as possible.

‘What do you eat?’ she said. It was polite to offer guests food, she knew.

‘I’ve got used to slugs and worms and stuff,’ said the toad. ‘It wasn’t easy. Don’t worry if you don’t have any. I expect you weren’t expecting a toad to drop in.’

‘How about some milk?’

‘You’re very kind.’

Tiffany fetched some, and poured it into a saucer. She watched while the toad crawled in.

‘Were you a handsome prince?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, right, maybe,’ said the toad, dribbling milk.

‘So why did Miss Tick put a spell on you?’

‘Her? Huh, she couldn’t do that,’ said the toad. ‘It’s serious magic, turning someone into a toad but leaving them thinking they’re human. No, it was a fairy godmother. Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They’ve got a mean streak.’

‘Why did she do it?’

The toad looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t know,’ it said. ‘It’s all a bit… foggy. I just know I’ve been a person. At least, I think I know. It gives me the willies. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I think, was I ever really human? Or was I just a toad that got on her nerves and she made me think I was human once? That’d be a real torture, right? Supposing there’s nothing for me to turn back into?’ The toad turned worried yellow eyes on her. ‘After all, it can’t be very hard to mess with a toad’s head, yeah? It must be much simpler that turning, oh, a one-hundred-and-sixty- pound human into eight ounces of toad, yes? After all, where’s the rest of the mass going to go, I ask myself? Is it just sort of, you know, left over? Very worrying. I mean, I’ve got one or two memories of being a human, of course, but what’s a memory? Just a thought in your brain. You can’t be sure it’s real. Honestly, on nights when I’ve eaten a bad slug I wake up screaming, except all that comes out is a croak. Thank you for the milk, it was very nice.’

Tiffany stared in silence at the toad.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘magic is a lot more complicated than I thought.’

‘Flappitty-flappitty flap! Cheep, cheep! Ach, poor wee me, cheepitty-cheep!’

Tiffany ran over to the window.

There was a Feegle on the path. It had made itself some crude wings out of a piece of rag, and a kind of beaky cap out of straw, and was wobbling around in a circle like a wounded bird.

‘Ach, cheepitty-cheep! Fluttery-flutter! I certainly hope dere’s no’ a pussycat aroound! Ach, dearie me!’ it yelled.

And down the path Ratbag, arch-enemy of all baby birds, slunk closer, dribbling. As Tiffany opened her mouth to yell, he leaped and landed with all four feet on the little man.

Or at least where the little man had been, because he had somersaulted in mid-air and was now right in front of Ratbag’s face and had grabbed a cat ear with each hand.

‘Ach, see you, pussycat, scunner that y’are!’ he yelled. ‘Here’s a giftie from the t’ wee burdies, yah schemie!’

He butted the cat hard on the nose. Ratbag spun in the air and landed on his back with his eyes crossed. He squinted in cold terror as the little man leaned down at him and shouted, ‘CHEEP!’

Then he levitated in the way that cats do and became a ginger streak, rocketing down the path, through the open door and shooting past Tiffany to hide under the sink.

The Feegle looked up, grinning, and saw Tiffany.

‘Please don’t go—’ she began quickly, but he went, in a blur.

Tiffany’s mother was hurrying down the path. Tiffany picked up the toad and put it back in her apron pocket just in time.

‘Where’s Wentworth? Is he here?’ her mother asked urgently. ‘Did he come back? Answer me!’

‘Didn’t he go up to the shearing with you, Mum?’ said Tiffany, suddenly nervous. She could feel the panic pouring off her mother like smoke.

‘We can’t find him!’ There was a wild look in her mother’s eyes. ‘I only turned my back for a minute! Are you sure you haven’t seen him?’

‘But he couldn’t come all the way back here—’

‘Go and look in the house! Go on!’

Mrs Aching hurried away. Hastily, Tiffany put the toad on the floor and chivvied him under the sink. She heard him croak and Ratbag, mad with fear and bewilderment, came out from under the sink in a whirl of legs and rocketed out of the door.

She stood up. Her first, shameful thought was: He wanted to go up to watch the shearing. How could he get lost? He went with Mum and Hannah and Fastidia!

And how closely would Fastidia and Hannah watch him with all those young men up there?

She tried to pretend she hadn’t thought that, but she was treacherously good at spotting when she was lying. That’s the trouble with a brain: it thinks more than you sometimes want it to.

But he’s never interested in moving far away from people! It’s half a mile up to the shearing pens! And he doesn’t move that fast. After a few feet he flops down and demands sweets!

But it would be a bit more peaceful around here if he did get lost…

There it went again, a nasty, shameful thought which she tried to drown out by getting busy. But first she took some sweets out of the jar, as bait, and rustled the bag as she ran from room to room.

She heard boots in the yard as some of the men came down from the shearing sheds, but got on with looking under beds and in cupboards, even ones so high that a toddler couldn’t possibly reach them, and then looked again under beds that she’d already looked under, because it was that kind of search. It was the kind of search where you go and look in the attic, even though the door is always locked.

After a few minutes there were two or three voices outside, calling for Wentworth, and she heard her father say, ‘Try down by the river!’

…and that meant he was frantic too, because Wentworth would never walk that far without a bribe. He