The Wee Free Men

‘The best way is to find the drome,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’ll be in the dream with you, in disguise. Then ye just gives it a good kickin’.’

‘By kicking you mean—?’

‘Choppin’ its heid off generally works.’

Now, Tiffany thought, I am impressed. I wish I wasn’t. ‘And this is Fairyland?’ she said.

‘Aye. Ye could say it’s the bit the tourists dinnae see,’ said William. ‘An’ ye did well. Ye were fightin’ it. Ye knew it wasnae right.’

Tiffany remembered the friendly cat, and the falling shepherdess. She’d been trying to send messages to herself. She should have listened.

‘Thank you for coming after me,’ she said, meekly. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Ach, we can generally find a way intae anywhere, even a dream,’ said William, smiling. ‘We’re a stealin’ folk, after all.’ A piece of the drome fell out of the tree and flopped onto the snow.

‘One of them won’t get me again!’ said Tiffany.

‘Aye. I believe you. Ye have murrrder in yer eyes,’ said William, with a touch of admiration. ‘If I was a drome I’d be pretty fearful noo, if I had a brain. There’ll be more of them, mark you, and some of ‘em are cunning. The Quin uses ‘em as guards.’

‘I won’t be fooled!’ Tiffany remembered the horror of the moment when the thing had lumbered around changing shape. It was worse because it was in her house, her place. She’d felt real terror as the big shapeless thing crashed across the kitchen, but the anger had been there too. It was invading her place.

The thing wasn’t just trying to kill her, it was insulting her . . .

William was watching her.

‘Aye, ye’re lookin’ mighty fierce,’ he said. ‘Ye must love your wee brother to face a’ these monsters for him . . .’

And Tiffany couldn’t stop her thoughts. I don’t love him. I know I don’t. He’s just so . . . sticky, and can’t keep up, and I have to spend too much time looking after him, and he’s always screaming for things. I can’t talk to him. He just wants all the time.

But her Second Thinking said: He’s mine. My place, my home, my brother! How dare anything touch what’s mine!

She’d been brought up not to be selfish. She knew she wasn’t, not in the way people meant. She tried to think of other people. She never took the last slice of bread. This was a different feeling.

She wasn’t being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it. She thought of:

. . . Granny Aching’s light, weaving slowly across the downs, on freezing, sparkly nights or in storms like a raging war, saving lambs from the creeping frost or rams from the precipice. She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would probably be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable.

There had been the time when they met the pedlar and the donkey in the lane. It was a small donkey and could hardly be seen under the pack he‘d piled on it. And he was thrashing it because it had fallen over.

Tiffany had cried to see that, and Granny had looked at her and then said something to Thunder and Lightning. . .

The pedlar had stopped when he heard the growling. The sheepdogs had taken up position on either side of the man, so that he couldn’t quite see them both at once. He raised his stick as if to hit Lightning, and Thunder’s growl grew louder.

‘I’d advise ye not to do that,’ said Granny.

He wasn’t a stupid man. The eyes of the dogs were like steel balls. He lowered his arm.

‘Now throw down the stick,’ said Granny. The man did so, dropping it into the dust as though it had suddenly grown red-hot.