The Wee Free Men

The tide of nightmares rolled over him and kept coming.

Rob sheathed his sword. ‘Ye heard oour kelda, lads!’ he shouted. ‘Grab her! We’rrre offski!’

Tiffany was lifted up. Feegles raised the unconscious Roland. And everyone ran for the trees.

Tiffany pulled her hand out of her apron pocket, and opened up the crumpled wrapper of Jolly Sailor tobacco. It was something to focus on, to remind her of a dream…

People said you could see the sea from the very top of the downs, but Tiffany had stared hard on a fine winter’s day, when the air was clear, and seen nothing but the hazy blue of distance. But the sea on the Jolly Sailor packet was deep blue, with white crests on the waves. It was the sea, for Tiffany.

It had looked like a small drome in the trees. That meant it wasn’t very powerful. She hoped so. She had to hope so…

The trees got closer. So did the ring of nightmares. Some of the sounds were horrible, of cracking bones and crushing rocks and stinging insects and screaming cats, getting nearer and nearer and nearer—

Chapter 12 Jolly Sailor

–there was sand around her, and white waves crashing, and water draining off the shingle and sounding like an old woman sucking a hard mint.

‘Crivens! Where are we noo?’ said Daft Wullie.

‘Aye, and why’re we all lookin’ like yellow mushrooms?’ Rob Anybody added.

Tiffany looked down, and giggled. Every pictsie was wearing a Jolly Sailor outfit, with an oilskin coat and a huge yellow oilskin rain hat that covered most of their faces. They started to wander about, bumping into one another.

My dream! Tiffany thought. The drome uses what it can find in your head… but this is my dream. I can use it.

Wentworth had gone quiet. He was staring at the waves.

There was a boat pulled up on the shingle. As one pictsie, or small yellow mushroom, the Nac Mac Feegles were flocking towards it and clambering up the sides.

‘What are you doing?’ said Tiffany.

‘Best if we wuz leavin’,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’s a good dream ye’ve found us, but we cannae stay here.’

‘But we should be safe here!’

‘Ach, the Quin finds a way in everywhere,’ said Rob, as a hundred pictsies raised an oar. ‘Dinnae fash yersel’, we know all about boats. Did ye no’ see Not-totally-wee Georgie pike fishin’ wi’ Wee Bobby in the stream the other day? We is no strangers to the piscatorial an’ nautical arts, ye ken.’

And they did indeed seem to know about boats. The oars were heaved into the rowlocks, and a party of Feegles pushed it down the stones and into the waves.

‘Now you just hand us the wee bairn,’ shouted Rob Anybody from the stern. Uncertainly, her feet slipping on the wet stones, Tiffany waded through the cold water and handed Wentworth over.

He seemed to think it was very funny.

‘Weewee mens!’ he yelled, as they lowered him into the boat. It was his only joke, so he wasn’t going to stop.

‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Rob Anybody, tucking him under the seat. ‘Noo just you bide there like a good boy and no yellin’ for sweeties or Uncle Rob’ll gi’ ye a skelpin’ across the earhole, OK?’

Wentworth chuckled.

Tiffany ran back up the beach and hauled Roland to his feet. He opened his eyes and looked blearily at her.

‘W’a’s happening?’ he said. ‘I had this strange drea—’ and then he shut his eyes again, and sagged.

‘Get in the boat!’ Tiffany shouted, dragging him across the shingle.

‘Crivens, are we takin’ this wee streak o’ useless-ness?’ said Rob, grabbing Roland’s trousers and heaving him aboard.

‘Of course!’ Tiffany hauled herself in afterwards, and landed in the bottom of the boat as a wave took it. The oars creaked and splashed, and the boat jerked forward. It jolted once or twice as more waves hit it, and then began to plunge across the sea. The pictsies were strong, after all. Even though each oar was a battleground as pictsies hung from it, or piled up on one another’s shoulders or just heaved anything they could grasp, both oars were almost bending as they were dragged through the water.

Tiffany picked herself up, and tried to ignore the sudden uncertain feeling in her stomach.

‘Head for the lighthouse!’ she said.

‘Aye, I ken that,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’s the only place there is! And the Quin disnae like light.’ He grinned. ‘It’s a good dream, lady. Have ye no’ looked at the sky?’

‘It’s just a blue sky,’ said Tiffany.

‘It’s no’ exactly a sky,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Look behind ye.’

Tiffany turned. It was a blue sky. Very blue. But above the retreating beach, halfway up the sky, was a band of yellow. It looked a long way away, and hundreds of miles across. And in the middle of it, looming over the world as big as a galaxy and grey-blue with distance, was a lifebelt.

On it, but spelled backwards in letters larger than the moon, were the words:

R O L I A S Y L L O J

‘We are in the label?’ said Tiffany.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody.

‘But the sea feels… real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!’

‘Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.’ Rob nodded. ‘Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ an’ runnin’ aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: the universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.’

Tiffany took the grubby label out of her pocket and stared at it again. There was the lifebelt, and the lighthouse. But the Jolly Sailor himself wasn’t there. What was there, so tiny as to be little bigger than a dot on the printed sea, was a tiny rowing boat.

She looked up. There were storm clouds in the sky, in front of the huge, hazy lifebelt. They were long and ragged, curling as they came.

‘It didnae take her long to find a way in,’ muttered William.

‘No,’ said Tiffany, ‘but this is my dream. I know how it goes. Keep rowing!’

Tangling and tumbling, some of the clouds passed overhead and then swooped towards the sea. They vanished beneath the waves like a waterspout in reverse.

It began to rain hard, so hard that a haze of mist rose over the sea.

‘Is that it?’ Tiffany wondered. ‘Is that all she can do?’

‘I doot it,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Bend them oars, lads!’

The boat shot forward, bouncing through the rain from wavetop to wave top.

But, against all normal rules, it was now trying to go uphill. The water was mounding up and up, and the boat washed backwards in the streaming surf.

Something was rising. Something white was pushing the seas aside. Great waterfalls poured off the shining dome that climbed towards the storm sky.