The Wee Free Men

‘You never loved him. You have a heart like a little snowball. I can see it.’

Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled.   ‘Love?’ she said.

‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s my brother! My brother!’

‘Yes, that’s a very witchy thing, isn’t it,’ said the voice of the Queen. ‘Selfishness. Mine, mine, mine. All a witch cares about is what’s hers.’

‘You stole him!’

‘Stole? You mean you thought you owned him?’

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: She’s finding your weaknesses. Don’t listen to her.

‘Ah, you have Second Thoughts,’ said the Queen. ‘I expect you think that makes you very witchy, do you?’

‘Why won’t you let me see you?’ said Tiffany. ‘Are you frightened?’

‘Frightened?’ said the voice of the Queen. ‘Of something like you?’

And the Queen was there, in front of her. She was much taller than Tiffany, but just as slim; her hair was long and black, her face pale, her lips cherry red, her dress black and white and red. And it was all, very slightly, wrong.

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: It’s because she’s perfect. Completely perfect. Like a doll. No one real is as perfect as that.

‘That’s not you,’ said Tiffany, with absolute certainty. That’s just your dream of you. That’s not you at all.’

The Queen’s smile disappeared for a moment and came back all edgy and brittle.

‘Such rudeness, and you hardly know me,’ she said, sitting down on the leafy seat. She patted the space beside her. ‘Do sit down,’ she said. ‘Standing there like that is so confrontational. I will put your bad manners down to simple disorientation.’ She gave Tiffany a beautiful smile.

Look at the way her eyes move, said Tiffany’s Second Thoughts. I don’t think she’s using them to see you with. They’re just beautiful ornaments.

‘You have invaded my home, killed some of my creatures and generally acted in a mean and despicable way,’ said the Queen. This offends me. However, I understand that you have been badly led by disruptive elements—’

‘You stole my brother,’ said Tiffany, holding Wentworth tightly. ‘You steal all sorts of things.’ But her voice sounded weak and tinny in her ears.

‘He was wandering around lost,’ said the Queen calmly. ‘I brought him home and comforted him.’

And what there was about the Queen’s voice was this: it said, in a friendly, understanding way, that she was right and you were wrong. And this wasn’t your fault, exactly. It was probably the fault of your parents, or your food, or something so terrible you’ve completely forgotten about it. It wasn’t your fault, the Queen understood, because you were a nice person. It was just such a terrible thing that all these bad influences had made you make the wrong choices. If only you’d admit that, Tiffany, then the world would be a much happier place—

- this cold place, guarded by monsters, in a world where nothing grows older, or up, said her Second Thoughts. A world with the Queen in charge of everything. Don’t listen.

She managed to take a step backwards.

‘Am I a monster?’ said the Queen. ‘All I wanted was a little bit of company—’

And Tiffany’s Second Thoughts, quite swamped by the Queen’s wonderful voice, said: Miss Female Robinson . . .

She’d come to work as a maid at one of the farms many years ago. They said that she’d been brought up in a Home for the Destitute in Yelp. They said she’d been born there after her mother had arrived during a terrible storm and the master had written in his big black diary: ‘To Miss Robinson, female infant’, and her young mother hadn’t been very bright and was dying in any case and had thought that was the baby’s name. After all, it had been written down in an official book.

Miss Robinson was quite old now, never said much, never ate much, but you never saw her not doing something. No one could scrub a floor like Miss Female Infant Robinson. She had a thin, wispy face with a pointed red nose, and thin, pale hands with red knuckles, which were always busy. Miss Robinson worked hard.