The Wee Free Men

‘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 tiled roofs instead of thatch. She considered that this was foreign travel.

Granny Aching had never been there, said her father on the way. She hated leaving the Chalk, he said. She said it made her dizzy.

It was a great day. Tiffany was sick on candyfloss, had her fortune told by a little old lady who said that many, many men would want to marry her, and won the shepherdess, which was made of china painted in white and blue.

She was the star prize on the hoop-la stall but Tiffany’s father had said that it was all cheating, because the base was so wide that not one throw in a million could ever drop the hoop right over it.