The Wee Free Men (13 page)

“You wouldn’t be happier with, say, Henry?” said Tiffany, helplessly.

“Ach, nay, mistress.” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock wrinkled his face. “There’s nay history tae the name, ye ken. But there have been a number o’ brave warriors called No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. Why, ’tis nearly as famous a name as Wee Jock itself! An’, o’ course, should Wee Jock hisself be taken back to the Last World, then I’ll get the name o’Wee Jock, which isna to say that I mislike the name o’ No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, ye ken. There’s been many a fine story o’ the exploits o’ No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock,” the pictsie added, looking so earnest that Tiffany didn’t have the heart to say that they must have been very long stories.

Instead she said: “Well, er, please, I want to talk to Hamish the aviator.”

“Nae problem,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. “He’s up there right noo.”

He vanished. A moment later Tiffany heard—or, rather, felt with
her ears—the bubbling sensation of a Feegle whistle.

Tiffany pulled
Diseases of the Sheep
, which was now looking very battered, out of her apron. There was a blank page at the back. She tore it out, feeling like a criminal for doing so, and took out her pencil.

“Dear Mum and Dad,” she wrote carefully. “How are you, I am well. Wentworth is also well but I have to go and fetch him from the Qu where he is staying. Hope to be back soon, Tiffany. PS I hope the cheese is all right.”

She was just considering this when she heard a rush of wings overhead. There was a whirring noise, a moment of silence, and then a small, weary, and rather muffled voice said: “Ach, crivens…”

She looked out onto the turf. The body of Hamish was upside down a few feet away. His arms with their twirlers were still outstretched.
*

It took some time to get him out. If he landed headfirst and spinning, Tiffany was told, he had to be unscrewed in the opposite direction so that his ears wouldn’t come off.

When he was upright and swaying unsteadily, Tiffany said: “Can you wrap this letter in a stone and drop it in front of the farmhouse where people will see it?”

“Aye, mistress.”

“And…er…does it hurt when you land headfirst like that?”

“Nay, mistress, but it is awfu’ embarrassing.”

“Then there’s a sort of toy we used to make that might help you,” said Tiffany. “You make a kind of…bag of air—”

“Bag o’ air?” said the aviator, looking puzzled.

“Well, you know how things like shirts billow out on a clothesline when it’s windy? Well, you just make a cloth bag and tie some strings to it and a stone to the strings, and when you throw it up, the bag fills with air and the stone floats down.”

Hamish stared at her.

“Do you understand me?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye. I wuz just waitin’ to see if you wuz goin’ to tell me anything else,” said Hamish politely.

“Do you think you could, er,
borrow
some fine cloth?”

“Nay, mistress, but I ken well where I can steal some,” said Hamish.

Tiffany decided not to comment on this. She said: “Where was the Queen when the mist came down?”

Hamish pointed. “Aboot a half mile yonder, mistress.”

In the distance Tiffany could see some more mounds, and a few stones from the old days.

Trilithons, they were called, which just meant “three stones.” The only stones found naturally on the downs were flints. But the giant stones of the trilithons had been dragged from at least ten miles away, and were stacked like a child stacks toy bricks. Here and there the big stones had been stood in circles; sometimes one stone had been placed all alone. It must have taken a lot of people a long time to do all that. Some people said there’d been human sacrifices up there. Some said they were part of some old religion. Some said they marked ancient graves.

Some said they were a warning: Avoid this place.

Tiffany hadn’t. She’d been there with her sisters a few times, as a dare, just in case there were any skulls. But the mounds around the stones were thousands of years old. All that you found there now were rabbit holes.

“Anything else, mistress?” said Hamish politely. “Nay? Then I’ll just be goin’….”

He raised his arms over his head and started to run across the turf. Tiffany jumped as the buzzard skimmed down a few feet away from her and snatched him back up into the sky.

“How can a man six inches high train a bird like that?” she asked as the buzzard circled again for height.

“Ach, all it takes is a wee drop o’ kindness, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.

“Really?”

“Aye, an’ a big dollop o’ cruelty,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock said. “Hamish trains ’em by runnin’ aroound in a rabbit skin until a bird pounces on him.”

“That sounds awful!” said Tiffany.

“Ach, he’s not too nasty aboot it. He just knocks them out wi’ his heid, and then he’s got a special oil he makes which he blows up their beak,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock went on. “When they wakes up, they thinks he’s their mammy and’ll do his biddin’.”

The buzzard was already a distant speck.

“He hardly seems to spend any time on the ground!” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye. He sleeps in the buzzard’s nest at night, mistress. He says it’s wunnerfully warm. An’ he spends all his time in the air,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock added. “He’s ne’er happy unless he’s got the wind under his kilt.”

“And the birds don’t mind?”

“Ach, no, mistress. All the birds and beasts up here know it’s
good luck to be friends wi’ the Nac Mac Feegle, mistress.”

“They do?”

“Well, to tell ye the truth, mistress, it’s more that they know it’s unlucky
not
to be friends wi’ the Nac Mac Feegle.”

Tiffany looked at the sun. It was only a few hours away from setting.

“I must find the way in,” she said. “Look, Not-as-small-as—”

“No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,” said the pictsie, patiently.

“Yes, yes, thank you. Where is Rob Anybody? Where is
everybody
, in fact?”

The young pictsie looked a bit embarrassed.

“There’s a bit o’ a debate goin’ on down below, mistress,” he said.

“Well, we have got to find my brother, okay? I
am
the kelda in this vicinity, yes?”

“It’s a wee bit more comp-li-cat-ed than that, mistress. They’re, er, discussin’ ye…”

“Discussing
what
about me?”

Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock looked as if he really didn’t want to be standing there.

“Um, they’re discussing…er…they…”

Tiffany gave up. The pictsie was blushing. Since he was blue to begin with, this turned him an unpleasant violet color. “I’ll go back down the hole. Give my boots a push, will you, please?”

She slid down the dry dirt, and Feegles scattered in the cave below as she landed.

When her eyes got accustomed to the gloom once more, she saw that the galleries were crowded with pictsies again. Some of them were in the middle of washing, and many of them had, for
some reason, smoothed down their red hair with grease. They all stared at her as if caught in the act of something dreadful.

“We ought to be going if we’re to follow the Queen,” she said, looking down at Rob Anybody, who’d been washing his face in a basin made of half a walnut shell. Water dripped off his beard, which he’d braided up. There were three braids in his long hair now too. If he turned suddenly, he could probably whip somebody to death.

“Ach, weel,” he said, “there’s a wee matter we got tae sort oout, kelda.” He twiddled the tiny washcloth in his hands. When Rob Anybody twiddled, he was worried.

“Yes?” said Tiffany.

“Er…will ye no ha’ a cup o’ tea?” said Rob Anybody, and a pictsie staggered forward with a big gold cup that must have been made for a king.

Tiffany took it. She
was
thirsty, after all. There was a sigh from the crowd when she sipped the tea. It was actually quite good.

“We stole a bag o’ it fra’ a peddler who was asleep down by the high road,” said Rob Anybody. “Good stuff, eh?” He patted down his hair with his wet hands.

Tiffany’s cup stopped halfway to her lips. Perhaps the pictsies didn’t realize how loudly they whispered, because her ear was on a level with a conversation.

“Ach, she’s a bit on the big side, no offense to her.”

“Aye, but a kelda has to be big, ye ken, to have lots of wee babbies.”

“Aye, fair enough, big wimmin is a’ very well, but if a laddie was tae try tae cuddle this one, he’d have tae leave a chalk mark to show where he left off yesterday.”

“An’ she’s a bit young.”

“She needna have any babbies yet, then. Or mebbe not too many at a
time, say. Nae more than ten, mebbe.”

“Crivens, lads, what’re ye talkin’ aboout? ’Tis Rob Anybody she’ll choose anyway. Ye can see the big man’s poor wee knees knocking fra’ here!”

Tiffany lived on a farm. Any little beliefs that babies are delivered by storks or found under bushes tend to get sorted out early on if you live on a farm, especially when a cow is having a difficult calving in the middle of the night. And she’d helped with the lambing, when small hands could be very useful in difficult cases. She knew all about the bags of red chalk the rams had strapped to their chests, and why you knew later on that the ewes with the red smudges on their backs were going to be mothers in the spring. It’s amazing what a child who is quiet and observant can learn, and this includes things people don’t think she is old enough to know.

Her eye spotted Fion, on the other side of the hall. She was smiling, in a worrying way.

“What’s happening, Rob Anybody?” she said, laying the words down carefully.

“Ah, weel…it’s the clan rules, ye ken,” said the Feegle awkwardly. “Ye being the new kelda an’, an’, weel, we’re bound to ask ye, see, nae matter what we feel, we gotta ask ye mutter mutter mutter…” He stepped back quickly.

“I didn’t quite catch that,” said Tiffany.

“We’ve scrubbed up nice, ye ken,” Rob Anybody said. “Some o’ the lads actually had a bath in the dewpond, e’en though ’tis only May, and Big Yan washed under his arms for the first time ever, and Daft Wullie has picked ye a bonny bunch of flowers…”

Daft Wullie stepped forward, swollen with nervous pride, and thrust the aforesaid bouquet into the air. They probably
had
been
nice flowers, but he didn’t have much idea of what a bunch was or how you picked one. Stems and leaves and dropping petals stuck out of his fist in all directions.

“Very nice,” said Tiffany, taking another sip of the tea.

“Guid, guid,” said Rob Anybody, wiping his forehead. “So mebbe you’d like tae tell us mutter mutter mutter…”

“They want to know which one of them you’re going to marry,” said Fion loudly. “It’s the rules. Ye have to choose, or quit as kelda. Ye have to choose yer man an’ name the day.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody, not meeting Tiffany’s eye.

Tiffany held the cup perfectly steady, but only because suddenly she couldn’t move a muscle. She was thinking:
Aaargh! This is not happening to me! I can’t—he couldn’t—we wouldn’t—they’re not even—this is ridiculous! Run away!

But she was aware of hundreds of nervous faces in the shadows. How you deal with this is going to be important, said her Second Thoughts. They’re all watching you. And Fion wants to see what you’ll do. You really oughtn’t to dislike a girl four feet shorter than you, but you do.

“Well, this is very unexpected,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “A big honor, of course.”

“Aye, aye,” said Rob Anybody, looking at the floor.

“And there’s so many of you, it’d be so hard to choose,” Tiffany went on, still smiling. And her Second Thoughts said: He’s not happy about it either!

“Aye, it will that,” said Rob Anybody.

“I’d just like to have a little fresh air while I think about it,” said Tiffany, and didn’t let the smile fade until she was out on the mound again.

She crouched down and peered among the primrose
leaves. “Toad!” she yelled.

The toad crawled out, chewing something. “Hm?” it said.

“They want to
marry
me!”

“Mm phmm ffm mm?”

“What are you eating?”

The toad swallowed. “A very undernourished slug,” it said.

“I said they want to marry me!”

“And?”

“And? Well, just—just
think
!”

“Oh, right, yeah, the height thing,” said the toad. “It might not seem much now, but when you’re five feet seven he’ll still be six inches high—”

“Don’t laugh at me! I’m the kelda!”

“Well, of course, that’s the point, isn’t it,” said the toad. “As far as they’re concerned, there’s rules. The new kelda marries the warrior of her choice and settles down and has lots and lots of Feegles. It’d be a terrible insult to refuse—”

“I am not going to marry a Feegle! I can’t have hundreds of babies! Tell me what to do!”

“Me? Tell the kelda what to do? I wouldn’t dare,” said the toad. “And I don’t like being shouted at. Even toads have their pride, you know.” He crawled back into the leaves.

Tiffany took a deep breath, ready to shout, and then closed her mouth.

The old kelda must’ve known about this, she thought. So…she must have thought I’d be able to deal with it. It’s just the rules, and they didn’t know what to do about them. None of them wanted to marry a big girl like her, even if none of them would admit it. It was just the rules.

There must be a way round it. There had to be. But she had to
accept a husband and she had to name the day. They’d told her that.