The Wee Free Men

Granny Aching walked forward and picked it up. Tiffany remembered that it was a willow twig, long and whippy.

Suddenly, so fast that her hand was a blur, Granny sliced it across the man’s face twice, leaving two long red marks. He began to move and some desperate thought must have saved him, because now the dogs were almost frantic for the command to leap.

‘Hurts, don’t it,’ said Granny, pleasantly. ‘Now, I knows who you are, and I reckon you knows who I am. You sell pots and pans and they ain’t bad, as I recall But if I put out the word you’ll have no business in my hills. Be told. Better to feed your beast than whip it. You hear me?’

With his eyes shut and his hands shaking, the man nodded.

‘That’ll do,’ said Granny Aching, and instantly the dogs became, once more, two ordinary sheepdogs, who came and sat either side of her with their tongues hanging out.

Tiffany watched the man unpack some of the load and strap it to his own back and then, with great care, urge the donkey on along the road. Granny watched him go while filling her pipe with Jolly Sailor. Then, as she lit it, she said, as if the thought had just occurred to her:

‘Them as can do, has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.’

Tiffany thought: Is this what being a witch is? It wasn’t what I expected! When do the good bits happen?

She stood up. ‘Let’s keep going,’ she said.

‘Aren’t ye tired?’ said Rob.

‘We’re going to keep going!’

‘Aye? Weel, she’s probably headed for her place beyond the wood. If we dinnae carry ye, it’ll tak’ aboout a coupla hours—’

‘I’ll walk!’ The memory of the huge dead face of the drome was trying to come back into her mind, but fury gave it no space. ‘Where’s the frying pan? Thank you! Let’s go!’

She set off through the strange trees. The hoof-prints almost glowed in the gloom. Here and there other tracks crossed them, tracks that could have been birds’ feet, rough round footprints that could have been made by anything, squiggly lines that a snake might make, if there were such things as snow snakes.

The pictsies were running in line with her on either side.

Even with the edge of the fury dying away, it was hard looking at things here without her head aching. Things that seemed far off got closer too quickly, trees changed shape as she passed them . . .

Almost unreal, William had said. Nearly a dream. The world didn’t have enough reality in it for distances and shapes to work probably. Once again the magic artist was painting madly. If she looked hard at a tree it changed, and became more tree-like and less like something drawn by Wentworth with his eyes shut.

This is a made-up world, Tiffany thought. Almost like a story. The trees don’t have to be very detailed because who looks at trees in a story?

She stopped in a small clearing, and stared hard at a tree. It seemed to know it was being watched. It became more real. The bark roughened, and proper twigs grew on the end of the branches.

The snow was melting around her feet, too. Although ‘melting’ was the wrong word. It was just disappearing, leaving leaves and grass.

If I was a world that didn’t have enough reality to go around, Tiffany thought, then snow would be quite handy. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. It’s just white stuff. Everything looks white and simple. But I can make it complicated. I’m more real than this place.

She heard a buzzing overhead, and looked up.

And suddenly the air was filling with small people, smaller than a Feegle, with wings like dragonflies. There was a golden glow around them. Tiffany, entranced, reached out a hand—

At the same moment what felt like the entire clan of Nac Mac Feegle landed on her back and sent her sliding into a snowdrift.