The Wee Free Men

“What will happen to him if we don’t get him back?”



Again there was that “we dinna like the way this is going” look.



“I said—” Tiffany repeated.



“I darrresay she’ll send him back, in due time,” said William. “An’ he willna be any olderr. Nothing grows old here. Nothing grows. Nothing at all.”



“So he’ll be all right?”



Rob Anybody made a noise in his throat. It sounded like a voice that was trying to say aye but was being argued with by a brain that knew the answer was no.



“Tell me what you’re not telling me,” said Tiffany.



Daft Wullie was the first to speak. “That’s a lot o’ stuff,” he said. “For example, the meltin’ point o’ lead is—”



“Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,” said Rob Anybody quickly. “Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here, ye ken, where the time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ’cause that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad—ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again.”



Tiffany stared at him.



“It’s happened before,” said William.



“I will get him back,” said Tiffany quietly.



“We doon’t doubt it,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ where’er ye go, we’ll come with ye. The Nac Mac Feegle are afeared o’ nothing!”



A cheer went up, but it seemed to Tiffany that the blue shadows sucked all the sound away.



“Aye, nothin’ exceptin’ lawyers mmph mmph,” Daft Wullie tried to say, before Rob managed to shut him up.



Tiffany turned back to the line of hoofprints and began to walk.



The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot.



She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around.



All the Nac Mac Feegle were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through.



The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit something.



She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree, and just for a moment there was nothing but grayness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time.



It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was…frightening.



She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was…not connected. She watched herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t.



The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful.



And that was where it went wrong. Fear gripped her, all at once. She was in a strange world, with monsters, being followed by hundreds of little blue thieves. And…black dogs. Headless horsemen. Monsters in the river. Sheep whizzing backward across fields. Voices under the bed…



The terror took her. But because she was Tiffany, she ran toward it, raising the pan. She had to get through the forest, find the Queen, get her brother, leave this place!



Somewhere behind her, voices started to shout—



She woke up.



There was no snow, but there was the whiteness of the bedsheet and the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She stared at it for a while, then leaned down and peered under the bed.



There was nothing there but the guzunder. When she flung open the door of the doll’s house, there was no one inside but the two toy soldiers and the teddy bear and the headless dolly.



The walls were solid. The floor creaked as it always did. Her slippers were the same as they always were: old, comfortable, and with all the pink fluff worn off.



She stood in the middle of the floor and said, very quietly, “Is there anybody there?”



Sheep baa’d on the distant hillside, but they probably hadn’t heard her.



The door squeaked open and the cat, Ratbag, came in. He rubbed up against her legs, purring like a distant thunderstorm, and then went and curled up on her bed.



Tiffany got dressed thoughtfully, daring the room to do something strange.



When she got downstairs, breakfast was cooking. Her mother was busy at the sink.



Tiffany darted out through the scullery and into the dairy. She scrambled on hands and knees around the floor, peering under the sink and behind cupboards.



“You can come out now, honestly,” she said.



No one came. She was alone in the room. She’d often been alone in the room, and had enjoyed it. It was almost her private territory. But now, somehow, it was too empty, too clean.



When she wandered back into the kitchen, her mother was still standing by the sink, washing dishes, but a plate of steaming porridge had been put down in the one set place on the table.



“I’ll make some more butter today,” said Tiffany carefully, sitting down. “I might as well, while we’re getting all this milk.”



Her mother nodded and put a plate on the drainboard beside the sink.



“I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” said Tiffany.



Her mother shook her head.



Tiffany sighed. “And then she woke up and it was all a dream.” It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story. But it had all seemed so real. She could remember the smoky smell in the pictsies’ cave, and the way…who was it…oh, yes, he’d been called Rob Anybody…the way Rob Anybody had always been so nervous about talking to her.



It was strange, she thought, that Ratbag had rubbed up against her. He’d sleep on her bed if he could get away with it, but during the day he kept well out of Tiffany’s way. How odd.



There was a rattling noise near the mantelpiece. The china shepherdess on Granny’s shelf was moving sideways of its own accord, and as Tiffany watched with her porridge spoon halfway to her mouth, it slid off and smashed on the floor.



The rattling went on. Now it was coming from the big oven. She could see the door actually shaking on its hinges.



She turned to her mother and saw her put another plate down by the sink. But it wasn’t being held in a hand.



The oven door burst off the hinges and slid across the floor.



“Dinna eat the porridge!”



Nac Mac Feegles spilled out into the room, hundreds of them, pouring across the tiles.



The walls were shifting. The floor moved. And now the thing turning around at the sink was not even human but just…stuff, no more human than a gingerbread man, gray as old dough, changing shape as it lumbered toward Tiffany.



The pictsies surged past her in a flurry of snow.



She looked up at the thing’s tiny black eyes.



The scream came from somewhere deep inside. There was no Second Thought, no First Thought, just a scream. It seemed to spread out as it left Tiffany’s mouth until it became a black tunnel in front of her, and as she fell into it, she heard, in the commotion behind her:



“Who d’yer think ye’re lookin’ at, pal? Crivens, but ye’re gonna get sich a kickin’!”



Tiffany opened her eyes.



She was lying on damp ground in the snowy, gloomy wood. Pictsies were watching her carefully but, she saw, there were others behind them staring outward, into the gloom among the tree trunks.



There was…stuff in the trees. Lumps of stuff. It was gray, and it hung there like old cloth.



She turned her head and saw William standing beside her, looking at her with concern.



“That was a dream, wasn’t it?” she said.



“Weel, noo,” said William. “It was, ye ken, and therrre again, it wasna….”



Tiffany sat up suddenly, causing the pictsies to leap back.



“But that…thing was in it, and then you all came out of the oven!” she said. “You were in my dream! What is—was that creature?”



William the gonnagle stared at her as if trying to make up his mind.



“That was what we call a drome,” he said. “Nothing here really belongs here, remember? Everything is a reflection from outside, or something kidnaped from another worrrld, or mebbe something the Quin has made outa magic. It was hidin’ in the trees, and ye was goin’ so fast, ye didna see it. Ye ken spiders?”



“Of course!”



“Well, spiders spin webs. Dromes spin dreams. It’s easy in this place. The world you come from is nearly real. This place is nearly unreal, so it’s almost a dream anywa’. And the drome makes a dream for ye, wi’ a trap in it. If ye eats anything in the dream, ye’ll never want tae’ leave it.”



He looked as though Tiffany should have been impressed.



“What’s in it for the drome?” she asked.



“It likes watchin’ dreams. It has fun watching ye ha’ fun. An’ it’ll watch ye eatin’ dream food, until ye starve to death. Then the drome’ll eat ye. Not right away, o’ course. It’ll wait until ye’ve gone a wee bit runny, because it hasna teeth.”



“So how can anyone get out?”



“The best way is to find the drome,” said Rob Anybody. “It’ll be in the dream with you, in disguise. Then ye just gives it a good kickin’.”



“By kicking you mean—?”



“Choppin’ its heid off generally works.”



Now, Tiffany thought, I am impressed. I wish I wasn’t. “And this is Fairyland?” she said.



“Aye. Ye could say it’s the bit the tourists dinna see,” said William. “An’ ye did well. Ye were fightin’ it. Ye knew it wasna right.”



Tiffany remembered the friendly cat, and the falling shepherdess. She’d been trying to send messages to herself. She should have listened.



“Thank you for coming after me,” she said, meekly. “How did you do it?”



“Ach, we can generally find a way intae anywhere, even a dream,” said William, smiling. “We’re a stealin’ folk, after all.” A piece of the drome fell out of the tree and flopped onto the snow.



“One of them won’t get me again!” said Tiffany.



“Aye. I believe you. Ye have murrrder in yer eyes,” said William, with a touch of admiration. “If I was a drome, I’d be pretty fearful noo, if I had a brain. There’ll be more of them, mark you, and some of ’em are cunning. The Quin uses ’em as guards.”



“I won’t be fooled!” Tiffany remembered the horror of the moment when the thing had lumbered around changing shape. It was worse because it was in her house, her place. She’d felt real terror as the big shapeless thing crashed across the kitchen, but the anger had been there too. It was invading her place.