The Wee Free Men

red hair and an expression of determination.

She curtsied, then said, ‘Are ye the bigjob hag, mistress?’

Tiffany looked around. She was the only person in the cavern who was over seven inches tall.

‘Er, yes,’ she said. ‘Er… more or less. Yes.’

‘I am Fion. The kelda says to tell you the wee boy will come to nae harm yet.’

‘She’s found him?’ said Tiffany quickly. ‘Where is he?’

‘Nae, nae, but the kelda knows the way of the Quin. She didnae want you to fash yersel’ on that score.’

‘But she stole him!’

‘Aye. ‘Tis comp-li-cat-ed. Rest a wee while. The kelda will see you presently. She is… not strong now.’

Fion turned round with a swirl of skirts, strode back across the chalk floor as if she was a queen herself, and disappeared behind a large round stone that leaned against the far wall.

Tiffany, without looking down, carefully lifted the toad out of her pocket and held it close to her lips. ‘Am I fashing myself?’ she whispered.

‘No, not really,’ said the toad.

‘You would tell me if I was, wouldn’t you?’ said Tiffany urgently. ‘It’d be terrible if everyone could see I was fashing and I didn’t know.’

‘You haven’t a clue what it means, have you…?’ said the toad.

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘She just doesn’t want you to get upset, that’s all.’

‘Yes, I thought it was probably something like that,’ lied Tiffany. ‘Can you sit on my shoulder? I think I might need some help here.’

The ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle were watching her with interest, but at the moment it appeared that she had nothing to do but hurry up and wait. She sat down carefully, drumming her fingers on her knees.

‘Whut d’ye think of the wee place, eh?’ said a voice from below. ‘It’s great, yeah?’

She looked down. Rob Anybody Feegle and a few of the pictsies she’d already met were lurking there, watching her nervously.

‘Very… cosy,’ said Tiffany, because that was better than saying ‘How sooty’ or ‘How delightfully noisy’. She added: ‘Do you cook for all of you on that little fire?’

The big space in the centre held a small fire, under a hole in the roof which let the smoke get lost in the bushes above and in return brought in a little extra light.

‘Aye, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody.

‘The small stuff, bunnies an’ that,’ added Daft Wullie. The big stuff we roasts in the chalk pi– mmph mmph…’

‘Sorry, what was that?’ said Tiffany.

‘What?’ said Rob Anybody innocently, his hand firmly over the mouth of the struggling Wullie.

‘What was Wullie saying about roasting “big stuff”?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘You roast “big stuff” in the chalk pit? Is this the kind of big stuff that goes “baa”? Because that’s the only big stuff you’ll find in these hills!’

She kneeled down on the grimy floor and brought her face to within an inch of Rob Anybody’s face, which was grinning madly and sweating.

‘Is it?’

‘Ach… ah… weel… in a manner o’ speakin’

‘It is?’

‘‘Tis not thine, mistress!’ shrieked Rob Anybody. ‘We ne’er took an Aching ship wi’out the leave o’ Granny!’

‘Granny Aching let you have sheep?’

‘Aye, she did, did, did that! As p-payment!’

‘Payment? For what?’

‘No Aching ship ever got caught by wolves!’ Rob Anybody gabbled. ‘No foxes took an Aching lamb, right? Nor no lamb e’er had its een pecked out by corbies, not wi’ Hamish up in the sky!’

Tiffany looked sideways at the toad.

‘Crows,’ said the toad. ‘They sometimes peck out the eyes of—’

‘Yes, yes, I know what they do,’ said Tiffany. She calmed down a little. ‘Oh. I see. You kept away the crows and wolves and foxes for Granny, yes?’

‘Aye, mistress! No’ just kept ‘em awa’, neither!’ said Rob Anybody triumphantly. ‘There’s good eatin’ on a wolf.’

‘Aye, they kebabs up a treat, but they’re no’ as good as a ship, tho… mmph mmph…’ Wullie managed, before a hand was clamped over his mouth again.

‘From a hag ye only tak’ what ye’s given,’ said Rob Anybody, holding his struggling brother firmly. ‘Since she’s gone, though, weel… we tak’ the odd old ewe that would’ve deid anywa’, but ne’er one wi’ the Aching mark, on my honour.’

‘On your honour as a drunken rowdy thief?’ said Tiffany.

Rob Anybody beamed. ‘Aye!’ he said. ‘An’ I got a lot of good big reputation to protect there! That’s the truth o’ it, mistress. We keeps an eye on the ships of the hills, in mem’ry o’ Granny Aching, an’ in return we tak’ what is hardly worth a thing.’

‘And the baccy too, o’ course… mmph mmph…’ and then, once again, Daft Wullie was struggling to breathe.

Tiffany took a deep breath, not a wise move in a Feegle colony. Rob Anybody’s nervous grin made him look like a pumpkin man faced with a big spoon.

‘You take the tobacco?’ hissed Tiffany. ‘The tobacco the shepherds leave for… my grandmother?’

‘Ach, I forgot about that,’ squeaked Rob Anybody. ‘But we allus wait a few days in case she comes to collect it hersel’. Ye can ne’er tell wi’ a hag, after all. And we do mind the ships, mistress. And she wouldna grudge us, mistress! Many’s a night she’d share a pipe wi’ the kelda outside o’ her house on the wheelies! She’d not be one to let good baccy get all rainy! Please, mistress!’

Tiffany felt intensely angry, and what made it worse was that she was angry with herself.

‘When we find lost lambs and suchlike we drives ‘em here for when the shepherds come lookin’’ Rob Anybody added anxiously.

What did I think happened? Tiffany thought. Did I think she’d come back for a packet of Jolly Sailor? Did I think she was still somehow walking the hills, looking after the sheep? Did I think she… was still here, watching for lost lambs?

Yes! I want that to be true. I don’t want to think she’s just… gone. Someone like Granny Aching can’t just… not be there any more. And I want her back so much, because she didn’t know how to talk to me and I was too scared to talk to her, and so we never talked and we turned silence into something to share.

I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn’t understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once. She was Sarah Grizzel. She got married and had children, two of them in the shepherding hut. She must’ve done all sorts of things I don’t know about.

And into Tiffany’s mind, as it always did sooner or later, came the figure of the blue-and-white china shepherdess, swirling in red mists of shame…

Tiffany’s father took her to the fair at the town of Yelp one day not long before her seventh birthday, when the farm had some rams to sell. That was a ten-mile journey, the furthest she’d ever been. It was off the Chalk. Everything looked different. There were far more fenced fields and lots of cows and the buildings had