The Wee Free Men

‘And she takes children,’ said Tiffany. ‘Aye. Your wee brother’s not the first,’ said Rob Anybody. There’s no’ a lot of fun and laughter here, ye ken. She thinks she’s good wi’ children.’

‘The old kelda said she wouldn’t harm him,’ said Tiffany. That’s true, isn’t it?’

You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big, simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page. What they were thinking turned up right there on their faces and, now, they were all wearing a look that said: Crivens, I hope she disnae ask us the question we dinnae wantae answer . . .

‘That is true, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody, slowly. ‘She didnae lie to ye there. The Quin’ll try to be kind to him, but she disnae know how. She’s an elf. They’re no’ very good at thinking of other people.’

‘What will happen to him if we don’t get him back?’

Again, there was that ‘we dinnae like the way this is going’ look.

‘I said—’ Tiffany repeated.

‘I darrresay she’ll send him back, in due time,’ said William. ‘An’ he willnae be any olderr. Nothing grows old here. Nothing grows. Nothing at all.’

‘So he’ll be all right?’

Rob Anybody made a noise in his throat. It sounded like a voice that was trying to say ‘aye’ but was being argued with by a brain that knew the answer was ‘no’.

‘Tell me what you’re not telling me,’ said Tiffany.

Daft Wullie was the first to speak. That’s a lot o’ stuff,’ he said. ‘For example, the meltin’ point o’ lead is—’

“Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,’ said Rob Anybody quickly. ‘Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here, ye ken, where the time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ‘cos that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad, ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again.’

Tiffany stared at him.

‘It’s happened before,’ said William.

‘I will get him back,’ said Tiffany quietly.

‘We doon’t doubt it,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘An’ wheree’er ye go, we’ll come with ye. The Nac Mac Feegle are afeared o’ nothing!’

A cheer went up, but it seemed to Tiffany that the blue shadows sucked all the sound away.

‘Aye, nothin’ exceptin’ lawyers mmph mmph,’ Daft Wullie tried to say, before Rob managed to shut him up.

Tiffany turned back to the line of hoofprints, and began to walk.

The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot.

She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around.

All the Nac Mac Feegles were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through.

The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit something.

She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree and, just for a moment, there was nothing but greyness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time.

It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was . . . frightening . . .

She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red-hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was . . . not connected. She watched herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t.

The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful.

And that was where it went wrong. Fear gripped her, all at once. She was in a strange world, with monsters, being followed by hundreds of little blue thieves. And . . . Black dogs. Headless horsemen. Monsters in the river. Sheep whizzing backwards across fields. Voices under the bed . . .

The terror took her. But, because she was Tiffany, she ran towards it, raising the pan. She had to get through the forest, find the Queen, get her brother, leave this place!

Somewhere behind her, voices started to shout —

She woke up.

There was no snow, but there was the whiteness of the bedsheet and the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She stared at it for a while, then leaned down and peered under the bed.

There was nothing there but the guzunder. When she flung open the door of the doll’s house, there was no one inside but the two toy soldiers and the teddy bear and the headless dolly.

The walls were solid. The floor creaked like it always did. Her slippers were the same as they always were: old, comfortable and with all the pink fluff worn off.