The Wee Free Men

The old kelda fell silent. William the gonnagle inflated the bag of his mousepipes and blew into one of the tubes. Tiffany felt the bubbling in her ears of music too high-pitched to hear.



After a few moments Fion leaned over the bed to look at her mother, then started to cry.



Rob Anybody turned and looked up at Tiffany, his eyes running with tears. “Could I just ask ye to go out intae the big chamber, kelda?” he said, quietly. “We ha’ things to do, ye ken how it is….”



Tiffany nodded and, with great care, feeling pictsies scuttle out of her way, backed out of the room. She found a corner where she didn’t seem to be in anyone’s way and sat there with her back to the wall.



She’d expected a lot of “waily waily waily,” but it seemed the death of the kelda was too serious for that. Some Feegles were crying, and some were staring at nothing, and as the news spread, the tiered hall filled up with a wretched, sobbing silence….



…The hills had been silent on the day Granny Aching died.



Someone went up every day with fresh bread and milk and scraps for the dogs. It didn’t need to be quite so often, but Tiffany had heard her parents talking and her father had said, “We ought to keep an eye on Mam now.”



Today had been Tiffany’s turn, but she’d never thought of it as a chore. She liked the journey.



But she’d noticed the silence. It was no longer the silence of many little noises, but a dome of quiet all around the hut.



She knew then, even before she went in at the open door and found Granny lying on the narrow bed.



She’d felt coldness spread though her. It even had a sound—it was like a thin, sharp musical note. It had a voice, too. Her own voice. It was saying: It’s too late, tears are no good, no time to say anything, there are things to be done.



And…then she fed the dogs, who were waiting patiently for their breakfast. It would have helped if they’d done something soppy, like whine or lick Granny’s face, but they hadn’t. And still Tiffany heard the voice in her mind: No tears, don’t cry. Don’t cry for Granny Aching.



Now, in her head, she watched the slightly smaller Tiffany move around the hut like a little puppet.



She’d tidied up the hut. Besides the bed and the stove there really wasn’t much there. There was the clothes sack and the big water barrel and the food box, and that was it. Oh, stuff to do with sheep was all over the place—pots and bottles and sacks and knives and shears—but there was nothing there that said a person lived here, unless you counted the hundreds of blue-and-yellow Jolly Sailor wrappers pinned on one wall.



She’d taken one of them down—it was still underneath her mattress at home—and remembered the Story.



It was very unusual for Granny Aching to say more than a sentence. She used words as if they cost money. But there’d been one day when she’d taken food up to the hut, and Granny had told her a story. A sort of a story. She’d unwrapped the tobacco, and looked at the wrapper, and then looked at Tiffany with that slightly puzzled look she used, and said: “I must’ve looked at a thousand o’ these things, and I never once saw his bo-ut.” That was how she pronounced boat.



Of course Tiffany had rushed to have a look at this label, but she couldn’t see any boat, any more than she could see the naked lady.



“That’s ’cause the bo-ut is just where you can’t see it,” Granny had said. “He’s got a bo-ut for chasin’ the great white whale fish on the salt sea. He’s always chasing it, all round the world. It’s called Mopey. It’s a beast like a big cliff of chalk, I heard tell. In a book.”



“Why’s he chasing it?” Tiffany had asked.



“To catch it,” Granny had said. “But he never will, the reason being, the world is round like a big plate and so is the sea, and so they’re chasing one another, so it is almost like he is chasing hisself. Ye never want to go to sea, jiggit. That’s where worse things happen. Everyone says that. You stop along here, where’s the hills is in yer bones.”



And that was it. It was one of the very few times Granny Aching had ever said anything to Tiffany that wasn’t, in some way, about sheep. It was the only time she ever acknowledged that there was a world beyond the Chalk. Tiffany used to dream about the Jolly Sailor chasing the whale fish in his boat. And sometimes the whale fish would chase her, but the Jolly Sailor always arrived in his mighty ship just in time and their chase would start again.



Sometimes she’d run to the lighthouse, and wake up just as the door swung open. She’d never seen the sea, but one of the neighbors had an old picture on the wall that showed a lot of men clinging to a raft in what looked like a huge lake full of waves. She hadn’t been able to see the lighthouse at all.



And Tiffany had sat by the narrow bed and thought about Granny Aching, and about the little girl Sarah Grizzel very carefully painting the flowers in the book, and about the world losing its center.



She missed the silence. What there was now wasn’t the same kind of silence there had been before. Granny’s silence was warm, and brought you inside. Granny Aching might sometimes have had trouble remembering the difference between children and lambs, but in her silence you were welcome and belonged. All you had to bring was a silence of your own.



Tiffany wished that she’d had a chance to say sorry about the shepherdess.



Then she’d gone home and told everyone that Granny was dead. She was seven, and the world had ended.



Someone was tapping politely on her boot. She opened her eyes and saw the toad. It was holding a small rock in its mouth. It spat it out.



“Sorry about that,” it said. “I’d have used my arms, but we’re a very soggy species.”



“What am I supposed to do?” said Tiffany.



“Well, if you hit your head on this low ceiling, you would have a definite claim for damages,” said the toad. “Er…did I just say that?”



“Yes, and I hope you wish you hadn’t,” said Tiffany. “Why did you say it?”



“I don’t know, I don’t know,” moaned the toad. “Sorry, what were we talking about?”



“I meant what do the pictsies want me to do now?”



“Oh, I don’t think it works like that,” said the toad. “You’re the kelda. You say what’s to be done.”



“Why can’t Fion be kelda? She’s a pictsie!”



“Can’t help you there,” said the toad.



“Can I be of serrrvice?” said a voice by Tiffany’s ear.



She turned her head and saw, on one of the galleries that ran around the cave, William the gonnagle.



Up close, he was noticeably different from the other Feegles. His hair was neater, and braided into one pigtail. He didn’t have as many tattoos. He spoke differently too, more clearly and slowly than the others, sounding his Rs like a drumroll.



“Er, yes,” said Tiffany. “Why can’t Fion be kelda here?”



William nodded. “A good question,” he said politely. “But, ye ken, a kelda cannot wed her brrrrotherrrr. She must go to a new clan and wed a warrrrior there.”



“Well, why couldn’t that warrior come here?”



“Because the Feegles here would not know him. They’d have no rrrrespect for him.” William made ‘respect’ sound like an avalanche.



“Oh. Well…what was that about the Queen? You were going to say something and they stopped you.”



William looked embarrassed. “I don’t think I can tell you aboot—”



“I am the temporary kelda,” said Tiffany stiffly.



“Aye. Well…there was a time when we lived in the Queen’s world and served her, before she grew so cold. But she tricked us, and we rrrrebelled. It was a dark time. She does not like us. And that is all I will say,” William added.



Tiffany watched Feegles going in and out of the kelda’s chamber. Something was going on in there.



“They’re burying her in the other part of the mound,” said William without being asked. “Wi’ the other keldas o’ this clan.”



“I thought they would be more…noisy,” said Tiffany.



“She was their motherrr,” said William. “They do not want to shout. Their hearts are too full for worrrrds. In time we will hold a wake to help her back to the land o’ the living, and that’ll be a loud one, I can promise ye. We’ll dance the FiveHundredAndTwelvesome Reel to the tune o’ ‘The Devil Among The Lawyers’ and eat and drink, and I daresay my nephews will ha’ headaches the size o’ a sheep.” The old Feegle smiled briefly. “But for now, each Feegle remembers her in silence. We dinna mourn like ye do, ye ken. We mourn for them that has tae stay behind.”



“Was she your mother too?” said Tiffany quietly.



“Nay. She was my sister. Did she no’ tell ye that when a kelda goes to a new clan, she takes a few o’ her brothers with her? To be alone among strangers would be too much for a heart to bear.” The gonnagle sighed. “Of course, in time, after the kelda weds, the clan is full of her sons and is no’ so lonely for her.”



“It must be for you, though,” said Tiffany.



“You’re a quick one, I’ll grant ye that,” said William. “I am the last o’ those who came. When this is o’er, I’ll seek the leave of the next kelda to return to my ain folk in the mountains. This is a fiiine fat country and this is a fiiine bonny clan my nephews have, but I would like to die in the heather where I was borrrned. If you will excuse me, kelda…”



He walked away and was lost in the shadows of the mound.



Tiffany suddenly wanted to go home. Perhaps it was just William’s sadness, but now she felt shut up in the mound.



“I’ve got to get out of here,” she muttered.



“Good idea,” said the toad. “You’ve got to find the place where the time is different, for one thing.”



“But how can I do that?” wailed Tiffany. “You can’t see time!”



She stuck her arms through the entrance hole and pulled herself up into the fresh air.



There was a big old clock in the farmhouse, and the time on it got set once a week. That is, when her father went to the market in Creel Springs, he made a note of the position of the hands on the big clock there, and when he got home, he moved the hands on their clock to the same position. It was really just for show, anyway. Everyone took their time from the sun, and the sun couldn’t go wrong.



Now Tiffany lay among the trunks of the old thorn bushes, whose leaves rustled continuously in the breeze. The mound was like a little island in the endless turf; late primroses and even a few ragged foxgloves grew up here in the shelter of the thorn roots.



“She could have just told me where to look,” she said.



“But she didn’t know where it would be,” said the toad. “She just knew the signs to look for.”



Tiffany rolled over carefully and stared up at the sky between the low branches. It’ll shine out, the kelda had said….