The Wee Free Men

again, seventy pounds of enraged sheep slamming into it like a battering ram.

Granny lowered Tiffany again and lit her pipe. She puffed it peacefully as the building behind her shook and the dog yelped and whimpered.

After a couple of minutes she nodded at the men. They opened the door.

The dog came out limping on three legs, but it hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet before the ewe shot out behind it and butted it so hard that it rolled over.

It lay still. Perhaps it had learned what would happen if it tried to get up again.

Granny Aching had nodded to the men, who grabbed the sheep and dragged it back into the barn.

The Baron had been watching with his mouth open.

‘He killed a wild boar last year!’ he said. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘He’ll mend,’ said Granny Aching, carefully ignoring the question. ‘ ‘Tis mostly his pride that’s hurt. But he won’t look at a sheep again, you have my thumb on that.’ And she licked her right thumb and held it out.

After a moment’s hesitation, the Baron licked his thumb, reached down and pressed it against hers. Everyone knew what it meant. On the Chalk, a thumb bargain was unbreakable.

‘For you, at a word, the law was brake,’ said Granny Aching. ‘Will ye mind that, ye who sit in judgement? Will yer remember this day? Ye’ll have cause to.’

The Baron nodded to her.

‘That’ll do,’ said Granny Aching, and their thumbs parted.

Next day the Baron technically did give Granny Aching gold, but it was only the gold-coloured foil on an ounce of Jolly Sailor, the cheap and horrible pipe tobacco that was the only one Granny Aching would ever smoke. She was always in a bad mood if the pedlars were late and she’d run out. You couldn’t bribe Granny Aching for all the gold in the world, but you could definitely attract her attention with an ounce of Jolly Sailor.

Things were a lot easier after that, The bailiff was a little less unpleasant when rents were late, the Baron was a little more polite to people, and Tiffany’s father said one night after two beers that the Baron had been shown what happens when sheep rise up, and things might be different one day, and her mother hissed at him not to talk like that because you never knew who was listening.

And, one day. Tiffany heard him telling her mother, quietly: ‘ ‘Twas an old shepherds’ trick, that’s all. An old ewe will fight like a lion for her lamb, we all know that.’

That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done…

The Nac Mac Feegles were watching Tiffany carefully, with occasional longing glances at the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. I haven’t even found the witches’ school, she thought. I don’t know a single spell. I don’t even have a pointy hat. My talents are an instinct for making cheese and not running around panicking when things go wrong. Oh, and I’ve got a toad.

And I don’t understand half of what these little men are saying. But they know who’s taken my brother.

Somehow I don’t think the Baron would have a clue how to deal with this. I don’t, either, but I think I can be clueless in more sensible ways.

‘I… remember a lot of things about Granny Aching,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘The kelda sent us,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘She sensed the Quin comin’. She kenned there wuz going to be trouble. She tole us, it’s gonna be bad, find the new hag who’s kin to Granny Aching, she’ll ken what to do.’

Tiffany looked at the hundreds of expectant faces. Some of the Feegles had feathers in their hair, and necklaces of mole teeth. You couldn’t tell someone with half his face dyed dark blue and a sword as big as he was that you weren’t really a witch. You couldn’t disappoint someone like that.

‘And will you help me get my brother back?’ she said. The Feegles’ expressions didn’t change. She tried again. ‘Can you help me steal my brother back from the Quin?’

Hundred of small yet ugly faces brightened up considerably.

‘Ach, noo yer talkin’ oour language,’ said Rob Anybody.

‘Not… quite,’ said Tiffany. ‘Can you all just wait a moment? I’ll just pack some things,’ she said, trying to sound as if she knew what she was doing. She put the cork back on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. The Nac Mac Feegles sighed.

She darted back into the kitchen, found a sack, took some bandages and ointments out of the medicine box, added the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment because her father said it always did him good and, as an afterthought, added the book Diseases of the Sheep and picked up the frying pan. Both might come in useful.

The little men were nowhere to be seen when she went back into the dairy.

She knew she ought to tell her parents what was happening. But it wouldn’t work. It would be ‘telling stories’. Anyway, with any luck she could get Wentworth back before she was even missed. But, just in case…

She kept a diary in the dairy. Cheese needed to be kept track of, and she always wrote down details of the amount of butter she’d made and how much milk she’d been using.

She turned to a fresh page, picked up her pencil and, with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, began to write.

The Nac Mac Feegles gradually reappeared. They didn’t obviously step out from behind things, and they certainly didn’t pop magically into existence. They appeared in the same way that faces appear in clouds and fires; they seemed to turn up if you just looked hard enough and wanted to see them.

They watched the moving pencil in awe, and she could hear them murmuring.

‘Look at that writin’ stick noo, will ye, bobbin’ along. That’s hag business.’

‘Ach, she has the kennin’ o’ the writin’, sure enough.’

‘But you’ll no’ write doon oour names, eh, mistress?’

‘Aye, a body can be put in the pris’n if they have written evidence.’

Tiffany stopped writing and read the note:

Dear Mum and Dad,

I have gone to look for Wentworth. I am perfectly probably quite safe, because I am with some friends acquaintances people who knew Granny, ps the cheeses on rack three will need turning tomorrow if I’m not