The Wee Free Men

Tiffany and the Wee Free Men were alone on the downs. Feegles were picking themselves up around her.

‘Are you fine, mistress?’ said Rob Anybody.

‘Yes!’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s easy! If you get them off the snow they’re just dogs!’

‘We’d best move on. We lost some of the lads.’

The excitement drained away.

‘You mean they’re dead?’ Tiffany whispered. The sun was shining brightly again, the skylarks were back… and people were dead.

‘Ach, no,’ said Rob. ‘We’re the ones who’s deid. Did ye not know that?’

Chapter 6 The Shepherdess

‘You’re dead?’ said Tiffany. She looked around. Feegles were picking themselves up and grumbling, but no one was going ‘Waily waily waily.’ And Rob Anybody wasn’t making any sense at all.

‘Well, if you think you’re dead, then what are they?’ she went on, pointing to a couple of small bodies.

‘Oh, they’ve gone back to the land o’ the livin’,’ said Rob Anybody cheerfully. ‘It’s nae as good as this one, but they’ll bide fine and come back before too long. No sense in grievin’.’

The Achings were not very religious, but Tiffany thought she knew how things ought to go, and they started out with the idea that you were alive and not dead yet.

‘But you are alive!’ she said.

‘Ach, no, mistress,’ said Rob, helping another pictsie to his feet. ‘We wuz alive. And we wuz good boys back in the land o’ the livin’, and so when we died there we wuz borned into this place.’

‘You mean… you think… that you sort of died somewhere else and then came here?’ said Tiffany. ‘You mean this is like… heaven?’

‘Aye! Just as advertised!’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Lovely sunshine, good huntin’, nice pretty flowers and wee burdies goin’ cheep.’

‘Aye, and then there’s the fightin’,’ said another Feegle. And then they all joined in.

‘An’ the stealin’!’

‘An’ the drinkin’ an’ fightin’!’

‘An’ the kebabs!’ said Daft Wullie.

‘But there’s bad things here!’ said Tiffany. ‘There’s monsters!’

‘Aye,’ said Rob, beaming happily. ‘Grand, isn’t it? Every thin’ laid on, even things to fight!’

‘But we live here!’ said Tiffany.

‘Ach, well, mebbe all you humans wuz good in the Last World, too,’ said Rob Anybody generously. ‘I’ll just round up the lads, mistress.’

Tiffany reached into her apron and pulled out the toad as Rob walked away.

‘Oh. We survived,’ it said. ‘Amazing. There are very definite grounds for an action against the owner of those dogs, by the way.’

‘What?’ said Tiffany, frowning. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I… I… don’t know,’ said the toad. ‘The thought just popped into my head. Perhaps I knew something about dogs when I was human?’

‘Listen, the Feegles think they’re in heaven! They think they died and came here!’

‘And?’ said the toad.

‘Well, that can’t be right! You’re supposed to be alive here and then die and end up in some heaven somewhere else!’

‘Well, that’s just saying the same thing in a different way, isn’t it? Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die they go to a heavenly land somewhere,’ said the toad. ‘You know, where they can drink and fight and feast for ever? So maybe this is theirs.’

‘But this is a real place!’

‘So? It’s what they believe. Besides, they’re only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there’s room? I’m a toad, so you’ll appreciate that I’m having to guess a lot here. Maybe they’re just wrong. Maybe you’re just wrong. Maybe I’m just wrong.’

A small foot kicked Tiffany on the boot. ‘We’d be best be moving on, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. He had a dead Feegle over his shoulder. Quite a few of the others were carrying bodies, too. ‘Er… are you going to bury them?’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye, they dinnae need these ol’ bodies noo an’ it’s no’ tidy to leave ‘em lyin’ aboot,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Besides, if the bigjobs find little wee skulls and bones aroound they’ll start to wonder, and we don’t want anyone pokin’ aboot. Savin’ your presence, mistress,’ he added.

‘No, that’s very, er… practical thinking,’ said Tiffany, giving up. The Feegle pointed to a distant mound with a thicket of thorn trees growing on it. A lot of the mounds had thickets on them. The trees took advantage of the deeper soil. It was said to be unlucky to cut them down.

‘It’s nae very far noo,’ he said.

‘You live in one of the mounds?’ Tiffany asked. ‘I thought they were, you know, the graves of ancient chieftains?’

‘Ach, aye, there’s some ol’ dead kingie in the chamber next door but he’s nae trouble,’ said Rob. ‘Dinnae fret, there’s nae skelingtons or any such in oour bit. It’s quite roomy, we’ve done it up a treat.’

Tiffany looked up at the endless blue sky over the endlessly green downland. It was all so peaceful again, a world away from headless men and big savage dogs.

What if I hadn’t taken Wentworth down to the river? she thought. What would I be doing now? Getting on with the cheese, I suppose…

I never knew about all this. I never knew I lived in heaven, even if it’s only heaven to a clan of little blue men. I didn’t know about people who flew on buzzards.

I never killed monsters before.

‘Where do they come from?’ she said. ‘What’s the name of the place the monsters come from?’

‘Ach, ye prob’ly ken the place well,’ said Rob Anybody. As they grew nearer the mound, Tiffany thought she could smell smoke in the air.

‘Do I?’ she said.

‘Aye. But it’s a no’ a name I’ll say in open air. It’s a name to be whispered in a safe place. I’ll not say it under this sky.’

It was too big to be a rabbit hole and badgers didn’t live up here, but the entrance to the mound was tucked amongst the thorn roots and no one would have thought it was anything but the home of some kind of an animal.

Tiffany was slim, but even so she had to take off her apron and crawl on her stomach under the thorns to reach it. And it still needed several Feegles to push her through.

At least it didn’t smell bad and, once you were through the hole, it opened up a lot. Really, the entrance was just a disguise. Underneath, the space was the size of quite a large room, open in the centre but with Feegle- sized galleries around the walls from floor to ceiling. They were crowded with pictsies of all sizes, washing clothes, arguing, sewing and, here and there, fighting, and doing everything as loudly as possible. Some had hair and beards tinged with white. Much younger ones, only a few inches tall, were running around with no clothes on, and yelling at one another at the tops of their little voices. After a couple of years of helping to bring up Wentworth, Tiffany knew what that was all about.

There were no girls, though. No Wee Free Women.

No… there was one.

The squabbling, bustling crowds parted to let her through. She came up to Tiffany’s ankle. She was prettier than the male Feegles, although the world was full of things prettier than, say, Daft Wullie. But, like them, she had