The Wee Free Men

‘What happened to the toad?’ said Miss Tick, who did ask questions.

‘It’s gone to live with the Wee Free Men,’ said Tiffany. ‘It turned out it used to be a lawyer.’

‘You’ve given a clan of the Nac Mac Feegle their own lawyer?’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘That’ll make the world tremble. Still, I always say the occasional tremble does you good.’

‘Come, sisters, we must away,’ said Miss Tick, who had climbed on the other broomstick behind Mrs Ogg.

‘There’s no need for that sort of talk,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘That’s theatre talk, that is. Cheerio, Tiff. We’ll see you again.’

Her stick rose gently in the air. From the stick of Mistress Weatherwax, though, there was merely a sad little noise, like the thwop of Miss Tick’s hat point. The broomstick went kshugagugah.

Mistress Weatherwax sighed. ‘It’s them dwarfs,’ she said. ‘They say they’ve repaired it, oh yes, and it starts first time in their workshop—’

They heard the sound of distant hooves. With surprising speed, Mistress Weatherwax swung herself off the stick, grabbed it firmly in both hands, and ran away across the turf, skirts billowing behind her.

She was a speck in the distance when Tiffany’s father came over the brow of the hill on one of the farm horses. He hadn’t even stopped to put the leather shoes on it; great slices of earth flew up as hooves the size of large soup plates5, each one shod with iron, bit into the turf.

Tiffany heard a faint kshugagugahvwwoooom behind her as he leaped off the horse.

She was surprised to see him laughing and crying at the same time.

It was all a bit of a dream.

Tiffany found that a very useful thing to say. It’s hard to remember, it was all a bit of a dream. It was all a bit of a dream, I can’t be certain.

The overjoyed Baron, however, was very certain. Obviously this—this Queen woman, whoever she was, had been stealing children but Roland had beaten her, oh yes, and helped these two young children to get back as well.

Her mother had insisted on Tiffany going to bed, even though it was broad daylight. Actually, she didn’t mind. She was tired, and lay under the covers in that nice pink world halfway between asleep and awake.

She heard the Baron and her father talking downstairs. She heard the story being woven between them as they tried to make sense of it all. Obviously the girl had been very brave (this was the Baron speaking) but, well, she was nine, wasn’t she? And didn’t even know how to use a sword! Whereas Roland had fencing lessons at his school…

And so it went on. There were other things she heard her parents discussing later, when the Baron had gone. There was the way Ratbag now lived on the roof, for example.

Tiffany lay in bed and smelled the ointment her mother had rubbed into her temples. Tiffany must have got hit on the head, she’d said, because of the way she kept on touching it.

So… Roland with the beefy face was the hero, was he? And she was just like the stupid princess who broke her ankle and fainted all the time? That was completely unfair!

She reached out to the little table beside her bed where she’d put the invisible hat. Her mother had put down a cup of broth right through it, but it was still there. Tiffany’s fingers felt, very faintly, the roughness of the brim.

We never ask for any reward, she thought. Besides, it was her secret, all of it. No one else knew about the Wee Free Men. Admittedly Wentworth had taken to running through the house with a tablecloth round his waist shouting, ‘Weewee mens! I’ll scone you in the boot!’ but Mrs Aching was still so glad to see him back, and so happy that he was talking about things other than sweets, that she wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was talking about.

No, she couldn’t tell anyone. They’d never believe her, and suppose that they did, and went up and poked around in the pictsies’ mound? She couldn’t let that happen.

What would Granny Aching have done?

Granny Aching would have said nothing. Granny Aching often said nothing. She just smiled to herself, and puffed on her pipe, and waited until the right time…

Tiffany smiled to herself.

She slept, and didn’t dream.

And a day went past.

And another day.

On the third day, it rained. Tiffany went into the kitchen when no one was about and took down the china shepherdess from the shelf. She put it in a sack, then slipped out of the house and ran up onto the downs.

The worst of the weather was going either side of the Chalk, which cut through the clouds like the prow of a ship. But when Tiffany reached the spot where an old stove and four iron wheels stood out of the grass, and cut a square of turf, and carefully chipped out a hole for the china shepherdess, and then put the turf back… it was raining hard enough to soak it in and give it a chance of surviving. It seemed the right thing to do. And she was sure she caught a whiff of tobacco.

Then she went to the pictsies’ mound. She’d worried about that. She knew they were there, didn’t she? So, somehow, going to check that they were there would be… sort of… showing that she doubted if they would be, wouldn’t it? They were busy people. They had lots to do. They had the old kelda to mourn. They were probably very busy. That’s what she told herself. It wasn’t because she kept wondering if there really might be nothing down the hole but rabbits. It wasn’t that at all.

She was the kelda. She had a duty.

She heard music. She heard voices. And then sudden silence as she peered into the gloom.

She carefully took a bottle of Special Sheep Liniment out of her sack and let it slide into darkness.

Tiffany walked away, and heard the faint music start up again.

She did wave at a buzzard, circling lazily under the clouds, and she was sure a tiny dot waved back.

On the fourth day, Tiffany made butter, and did her chores. She did have help.

‘And now I want you to go and feed the chickens,’ she said to Wentworth. ‘What is it I want you to do?’

‘Fee’ the cluck-clucks,’ said Wentworth.

‘Chickens,’ said Tiffany, severely.

‘Chickens,’ said Wentworth obediently.

‘And wipe your nose not on your sleeve! I gave you a handkerchief. And on the way back see if you can carry a whole log, will you?’

‘Ach, crivens,’ muttered Wentworth.

‘And what is it we don’t say?’ said Tiffany. ‘We don’t say the—’

‘—the crivens word,’ Wentworth muttered.

‘And we don’t say it in front of—’

‘—in fron’ of Mummy,’ said Wentworth.

‘Good. And then when I’ve finished we’ll have time to go down to the river.’

Wentworth brightened up.

‘Weewee mens?’ he said.

Tiffany didn’t reply immediately.

Tiffany hadn’t seen a single Feegle since she’d been home.

‘There might be,’ she said. ‘But they’re probably very busy. They’ve got to find another kelda, and… well, they’re very busy. I expect.’

‘Weewee men say hit you in the head, fishface!’ said Wentworth happily.

‘We’ll see,’ said Tiffany, feeling like a parent. ‘Now please go and feed the chickens and get the eggs.’

When he’d wandered away, carrying the egg basket in both hands, Tiffany turned out some butter onto the marble slab and picked up the paddles to pat it into, well, a pat of butter. Then she’d stamp it with one of the