The Wee Free Men (17 page)

When she struggled out, the clearing was a battlefield. The
pictsies were jumping and slashing at the flying creatures, which buzzed around them like wasps. As she stared, two of them dived onto Rob Anybody and lifted him off his feet by his hair.

He rose in the air, yelling and struggling. Tiffany leaped up and grabbed him around the waist, flailing at the creatures with her other hand. They let go of the pictsie and dodged easily, zipping through the air as fast as hummingbirds. One of them bit her on the finger before buzzing away.

Somewhere a voice went: “Oooooooooooooeeerrrrrr…”

Rob struggled in Tiffany’s grip. “Quick, put me doon!” he yelled. “There’s gonna be poetry!”

T
he moan rolled around the clearing, as mournful as a month of Mondays.

“…rrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaoooooooo…”

It sounded like some animal in terrible pain. But it was, in fact, Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, who was standing on a snowdrift with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched, very theatrically.

He was rolling his eyes, too.

“…oooooooooooooooooooooo…”

“Ach, the muse is a terrible thing to have happen to ye,” said Rob Anybody, putting his hands over his ears.

“…oooooiiiiiit
is
with grreat lamentation and much worrying dismay,” the pictsie groaned, “That we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay…”

In the air the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another.

“…With quite a large number of drrrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock recited, “Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey…”

The fliers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off among the trees.

“…Witnessed by all of us at this time, and celebrated in this hasty rhyme!” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock shouted after them.

And they were gone.

Feegles were picking themselves up off the ground. Some were bleeding where the fairies had bitten them. Several were lying curled up and groaning.

Tiffany looked at her own finger. The bite of the fairy had left two tiny holes.

“It isna too bad,” Rob Anybody shouted up from below. “No one taken by them, just a few cases where the lads didna put their hands o’er their ears in time.”

“Are they all right?”

“Oh, they’ll be fine wi’ counsellin’.”

On the mound of snow William clapped Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock on the shoulder in a friendly way.

“That, lad,” he said proudly, “was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work, but ye has the groanin’ off fiiine. All in all, a verrry commendable effort! We’ll make a gonnagle out of ye yet!”

Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock blushed happily.

In Fairyland words
really
have power, Tiffany thought. And I am more real. I’ll remember that.

The pictsies assembled into battle order again, although it was pretty disorderly, and set off. Tiffany didn’t rush too far ahead this time.

“That’s yer little people wi’ wings,” said Rob, as Tiffany sucked at her finger. “Are ye happier now?”

“Why were they trying to carry you away?”

“Ach, they carries their victims off to their nest, where their young ones—”

“Stop!” said Tiffany. “This is going to be horrible, right?”

“Oh, aye. Gruesome,” said Rob, grinning.

“And you used to
live
here?”

“Ah, but it wasna so bad then. It wasna perfect, mark you, but the Quin wasna as cold in them days. The King was still aroound. She was always happy then.”

“What happened? Did the King die?”

“No. They had words, if ye tak’ my meanin’,” said Rob.

“Oh, you mean like an argument—”

“A bit, mebbe,” said Rob. “But they was
magical
words. Forests destroyed, mountains explodin’, a few hundred deaths, that kind of thing. And he went off to his own world. Fairyland was never a picnic, ye ken, even in the old days. But it was fine if you kept alert, an’ there was flowers and burdies and summertime. Now there’s the dromes and the hounds and the stinging fey and such stuff creepin’ in from their own worlds, and the whole place has gone doon the tubes.”

Things taken from their own worlds, thought Tiffany, as she tramped through the snow. Worlds all squashed together like peas in a sack, or hidden inside one another like bubbles inside other bubbles.

She had a picture in her head of things creeping out of their own world and into another, in the same way that mice invaded the larder. Only there were worse things than mice.

What would a drome do if it got into our world? You’d never
know it was there. It’d sit in the corner and you’d never see it, because it wouldn’t let you. And it’d change the way you saw the world, give you nightmares, make you want to die.

Her Second Thoughts added: I wonder how many have got in already and we don’t know?

And I’m in Fairyland, where dreams can hurt. Somewhere all stories are real, all songs are true. I thought that was a strange thing for the kelda to say….

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: Hang on, was that a First Thought?

And Tiffany thought: No, that was a Third Thought. I’m thinking about how I think about what I’m thinking. At least, I think so.

Her Second Thoughts said: Let’s all calm down, please, because this is quite a small head.

The forest went on. Or perhaps it was a small forest and, somehow, moved around them as they walked. This was Fairyland, after all. You couldn’t trust it.

And the snow still vanished where Tiffany walked, and she had only to look at a tree for it to smarten up and make an effort to look like a real tree.

The Queen is…well, a queen, Tiffany thought. She’s got a world of her own. She could do
anything
with it. And all she does is steal things, mess up people’s lives…

There was the thud of hoofbeats in the distance.

It’s her! What shall I do? What shall I say?

The Nac Mac Feegles leaped behind the trees.

“Come away oot o’ the path!” whispered Rob Anybody.

“She might still have him!” said Tiffany, gripping the pan handle nervously and staring at the blue shadows between the trees.

“So? We’ll find a wa’ to steal him! She’s the
Quin
! Ye canna beat
the Quin face-to-face!”

The hoofbeats were louder, and now it sounded as though there was more than one animal.

A stag appeared through the trees, steam pouring off it. It stared at Tiffany with wild red eyes and then, bunching up, leaped over her. She smelled the stink of it as she ducked, she felt its sweat on her neck.

It was a real animal. You couldn’t imagine a reek like that.

And here came the dogs.

The first one she caught with the edge of the pan, bowling it over. The other turned to snap at her, then looked down in amazement as pictsies erupted from the snow under each paw. It was hard to bite anyone when all four of your feet were moving away in different directions, and then other pictsies landed on its head and biting anything ever again soon became…impossible. The Nac Mac Feegle hated grimhounds.

Tiffany looked up at a white horse. That was real, too, as far as she could tell. And there was a boy on it.

“Who are
you
?” he said. He made it sound like “What sort of thing are you?”

“Who are you?” said Tiffany, pushing her hair out of her eyes. It was the best she could do right now.

“This is
my
forest,” said the boy. “I command you to do what I say!”

Tiffany peered at him. The dull, secondhand light of Fairyland was not very good, but the more she looked, the more certain she was. “Your name is Roland, isn’t it?” she said.

“You will not speak to me like that!”

“Yes, it is. You’re the Baron’s son!”

“I demand that you stop talking!” The boy’s expression was
strange now, creased up and pink, as if he was trying not to cry. He raised his hand with a riding whip in it—

There was a very faint
thwap
. Tiffany glanced down. The Nac Mac Feegle had formed a pile under the horse’s belly, and one of them, climbing up on their shoulders, had just cut through the saddle girth.

She held up a hand quickly. “Stand still!” she shouted, trying to sound commanding. “If you move, you’ll fall off your horse!”

“Is that a spell? Are you a witch?” The boy dropped the whip and pulled a long dagger from his belt. “Death to witches!”

He urged the horse forward with a jerk, and then there was one of those long moments, a moment when the whole universe said, “Uh-oh” and, still holding the dagger, the boy swiveled around the horse and landed in the snow.

Tiffany knew what would happen next. Rob Anybody’s voice echoed among the trees:

“You’re in trouble noo, pal!
Get him!
”

“No!” Tiffany yelled. “Get away from him!”

The boy scrambled backward, staring at Tiffany in horror.

“I do know you,” she said. “Your name
is
Roland. You’re the Baron’s son. They said you’d died in the forest—”

“You mustn’t talk about that!”

“Why not?”

“Bad things happen!”

“They’re already happening,” said Tiffany. “Look, I’m here to rescue my—”

But the boy had got to his feet and was running back through the forest. He turned and shouted, “Stay away from me!”

Tiffany ran after him, jumping over snow-covered logs, and saw him ahead, dodging from tree to tree. Then he
paused and looked back.

She ran up to him, saying, “I know how to get you out—”

—and danced.

She was holding the hand of a parrot or, at least someone with the head of a parrot.

Her feet moved under her, perfectly. They twirled her around, and this time her hand was caught by a peacock, or at least someone with the head of a peacock. She glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was now in a room, no, a
ballroom
full of masked people, dancing.

Ah, she thought. Another dream. I should have looked where I was going.

The music was strange. There was a kind of rhythm to it, but it sounded muffled and odd, as if it was being played backward, underwater, by musicians who’d never seen their instruments before.

And she
hoped
the dancers were wearing masks. She realized she was looking out through the eyeholes of one and wondered what she was. She was also wearing a long dress, which glittered.

O-kay, she thought carefully. There was a drome there, and I didn’t stop to look. And now I’m in a dream. But it’s not mine. It must make use of what it finds in your head, and I’ve never been to anything like this.

“Fwa waa fwah waa wha?” said the peacock. The voice was like the music. It sounded almost like a voice, but it wasn’t.

“Oh, yes,” said Tiffany. “Fine.”

“Fwaa?”

“Oh. Er…wuff fawf fwaff?”

This seemed to work. The peacock-headed dancer bobbed a little bow, said “Mwa waf waf” sadly, and wandered off.

Somewhere in here is the drome, said Tiffany to herself. And it must be a pretty good one. This is a
big
dream.

Little things were wrong, though. There were hundreds of people in the room, but the ones in the distance, although they were moving about in quite a natural way, seemed the same as the trees—blobs and swirls of color. You had to look hard to notice this, though.

First Sight, Tiffany thought.

People in brilliant costumes and still more masks walked arm in arm past her, as if she was just another guest. Those who weren’t joining the new dance were heading for the long tables at one side of the hall, which were piled with food.

Tiffany had seen such food only in pictures. People didn’t starve on the farm, but even when food was plentiful, at Hogswatch or after harvest, it never looked like this. The farm food was mostly shades of white or brown. It was never pink and blue, and never wobbled.

There were things on sticks, and things that gleamed and glistened in bowls. Nothing was simple. Everything had cream on it, or chocolate whirls, or thousands of little colored balls. Everything was spun or glazed or added to or mixed up. This wasn’t food—it was what food became if it had been good and had gone to food heaven.

It wasn’t just for eating, it was for show. It was piled up against mounds of greenery and enormous arrangements of flowers. Here and there huge transparent carvings were landmarks in this landscape of food. Tiffany reached up and touched a glittering cockerel. It was ice, damp under her fingertips. There were others, too—a jolly fat man, a bowl of fruits all carved in ice, a swan.

Tiffany was, for a moment, tempted. It seemed a very long time since she had eaten anything. But the food was too obviously not food at all. It was bait. It was supposed to say: Hello, little kiddie. Eat me.

I’m getting the hang of this, thought Tiffany. Good thing it didn’t think of cheese—

—and there was cheese. Suddenly,
cheese had always been there
.

She’d seen pictures of lots of different cheeses in the Almanack. She was good at cheese and had always wondered what the others tasted like. They were faraway cheeses with strange-sounding names, cheeses like Treble Wibbley, Waney Tasty, Old Argg, Red Runny, and the legendary Lancre Blue, which had to be nailed to the table to stop it attacking other cheeses.

Just a taste wouldn’t hurt, surely. It wasn’t the same as eating, was it? After all, she was in control, wasn’t she? She’d seen right through the dream straight away, hadn’t she? So it couldn’t have any effect, could it?

And…well,
cheese
was hardly temptation for anyone.

Okay, the drome must’ve put the cheese in as soon as she’d thought of it, but…

She was already holding the cheese knife. She didn’t quite remember picking it up.

A drop of cold water landed on her hand. It made her glance up at the nearest glittering ice carving.

It showed a shepherdess, with a saddlebag dress and a big bonnet. Tiffany was sure it had been a swan when she’d looked at it before.

The anger came back. She’d nearly been fooled! She looked at the cheese knife. “Be a sword,” she said. After all, the drome was
making her dream, but she was doing the dreaming. She was real. Part of her wasn’t asleep.