The Wee Free Men

“What about drunk?” said Tiffany, dragging Roland toward the lighthouse.



“We’ve ne’er been lost in oour lives! Is that no’ the case, lads?” said Rob Anybody. There was a murmur of resentful agreement. “The words lost and Nac Mac Feegle shouldna turn up in the same sentence!”



“And drunk?” said Tiffany again, laying Roland down on the beach.



“Gettin’ lost is something that happens to other people!” declared Rob Anybody. “I want to make that point perfectly clear!”



“Well, at least there shouldn’t have been anything to drink in a lighthouse,” said Tiffany. She laughed. “Unless you drank the lamp oil, and no one would dare do that!”



The pictsies suddenly fell silent.



“What would that be, then?” said Daft Wullie in a slow, careful voice. “Would it be the stuff in a kind o’ big bottle kind o’ thingie?”



“Wi’ a wee skull and crossbones on it?” said Rob Anybody.



“Yes, probably, and it’s horrible stuff,” said Tiffany. “It’d make you terribly ill if you drank it.”



“Really?” said Rob Anybody thoughtfully. “That’s verra…interesting. What sort o’ ill would that be, kind o’ thing?”



“I think you’d probably die,” said Tiffany.



“We’re already dead,” said Rob Anybody.



“Well, you’d be very, very, sick, then,” said Tiffany. She gave him a strong look. “It’s flammable, too. It’s a good thing you didn’t drink it, isn’t it?”



Daft Wullie belched loudly. There was a strong smell of kerosene.



“Aye,” he said.



Tiffany went and fetched Wentworth. Behind her, there was some muffled whispering as the pictsies went into a huddle.



“I told yez the wee skull on it meant we shouldna touch it!”



“Big Yan said that showed it wuz strong stuff! An’ things ha’ come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off ’f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!”



“What’s flammable mean?”



“It means it catches fire!”



“Okay, okay, dinna panic. No belchin’, and none of youse is to tak’ a leak anywhere near any naked flames, okay? And act nat’ral.”



Tiffany smiled to herself. Pictsies seemed very hard to kill. Perhaps believing you were already dead made you immune.



She turned and looked toward the lighthouse door. She had never actually seen it opened in her dream. She’d always thought that the lighthouse was full of light, on the basis that on the farm the cowshed was full of cows and the woodshed was full of wood.



“All right, all right,” she said, looking down at Rob Anybody. “I’m going to carry Roland, and I want you to bring Wentworth.”



“Don’t you want to carry the wee lad?” said Rob.



“Weewee man!” shouted Wentworth.



“You bring him,” said Tiffany shortly. She meant: I’m not sure this is going to work, and he might be safer with you than with me. I hope I’m going to wake up in my bedroom. Waking up in my bedroom would be nice….



Of course, if everyone else wakes up there, too, there might be some difficult questions asked, but anything’s better than the Queen—



There was a rushing, rattling noise behind her. She turned and saw the sea disappearing, very quickly. It was pulling back down the shore. As she watched, rocks and clumps of seaweed rose above the surf and then were suddenly high and dry.



“Ah,” she said, after a moment. “It’s all right. I know what this is. It’s the tide. The sea does this. In goes in and out every day.”



“Aye?” said Rob Anybody. “Amazin’. It looks like it’s pourin’ awa’ though a hole….”



About fifty yards away the last rivulets of seawater were disappearing over an edge, and some of the pictsies were already heading toward it.



Tiffany suddenly had a moment of something that wasn’t exactly panic. It was a lot slower and nastier than panic. It began with just a nagging little doubt that said: Isn’t the tide a bit slower?



The teacher (Wonders of the Nattral Wurld, One Apple) hadn’t gone into much detail. But there were fish flapping on the exposed seabed, and surely the fish in the sea didn’t die every day?



“Er, I think we’d better be careful,” she said, trailing after Rob Anybody.



“Why? It’s nae as though the water’s risin’,” he said. “When does the tide come back?”



“Um, not for hours, I think,” said Tiffany, feeling the slow, nasty panic getting bigger. “But I’m not sure this—”



“Tons o’ time, then,” said Rob Anybody.



They’d reached the edge, where the rest of the pictsies were lined up. A little bit of water still trickled over their feet, pouring down into the gulf beyond.



It was like looking down into a valley. At the far side, miles and miles away, the retreating sea was just a gleaming line.



Below them, though, were the shipwrecks. There were a lot of them. Galleons and schooners and clippers, masts broken, rigging hanging, hulls breached, lay strewn across the puddles in what had been the bay.



The Nac Mac Feegle, as one pictsie, sighed happily.



“Sunken treasure!”



“Aye! Gold!”



“Bullion!”



“Jools!”



“What makes you think they’ve got treasure in them?” said Tiffany.



The Nac Mac Feegle looked amazed, as if she’d suggested that rocks could fly.



“There’s got to be treasure in ’em,” said Daft Wullie. “Otherwise what’s the point of lettin’ ’em sink?”



“That’s right,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s got t’be gold in sunken ships, otherwise it wouldna be worth fighting all them sharkies and octopussies and stuff. Stealin’ treasure fra’ the ocean’s bed, that’s aboout the biggest, best thievin’ ever!”



And now what Tiffany felt was real, honest panic.



“That’s a lighthouse!” she said, pointing. “Can you see it? A lighthouse so ships don’t run into the rocks! Right? Understand? This is a trap made just for you! The Queen’s still around!”



“Mebbe just can we go down and look inside one wee ship?” said Rob Anybody wistfully.



“No! Because”—Tiffany looked up; a gleam had caught her eye—“because…the sea…is…coming…back…” she said.



What looked like a cloud on the horizon was getting bigger, and glittering as it came. Tiffany could already hear the roar.



She ran back up the beach and got her hands under Roland’s armpits, so that she could drag him to the lighthouse. She looked back, and the pictsies were still watching the huge, surging wave.



And there was Wentworth, watching the wave happily, and bending down slightly so that, if they stood on tiptoe, he could hold hands with two Feegles.



The image branded itself on her eyes. The little boy, and the pictsies, all with their backs to her, and all staring with interest at the rushing, glittering, sky-filling wall of water.



“Come on!” Tiffany yelled. “I was wrong, this isn’t the tide, this is the Queen—”



Sunken ships were lifted up and spun around in the hissing mountain of surf.



“Come on!”



Tiffany managed to haul Roland across her shoulder and, staggering across the rocks, made it to the lighthouse door as the water crashed behind her—



—for a moment the world was full of white light—



—and snow squeaked underfoot.



It was the silent, cold land of the Queen. There was no one around and nothing to see except snow and, in the distance, the forest. Black clouds hovered over it.



Ahead of her, and only just visible, was a picture in the air. It showed some turf, and a few stones, lit with moonlight.



It was the other side of the door back home.



She turned around desperately.



“Please!” she shouted. It wasn’t a request to anyone special. She just needed to shout. “Rob? William? Wullie? Wentworth?”



Away toward the forest there was the barking of the grimhounds.



“Got to get out,” muttered Tiffany. “Got to get away.”



She grabbed Roland by the collar and dragged him toward the door. At least he slid better on snow.



No one and nothing tried to stop her. The snow spilled a little way through the doorway between the stones and onto the turf, but the air was warm and alive with nighttime insect noises. Under a real moon, under a real sky, she pulled the boy over to a fallen stone and sat him up against it. She sat down next to him, exhausted to the bone, and tried to get her breath back.



Her dress was soaked and smelled of the sea.



She could hear her own thoughts, a long way off:



They could still be alive. It was a dream, after all. There must be a way back. All I have to do is find it. I’ve got to go back in there.



The dogs sounded very loud.



She stood up again, although what she really wanted to do was sleep.



The three stones of the door were a black shape against the stars.



And as she watched, they fell down. The one on the left slipped over, slowly, and the other two ended up leaning against it.



She ran over and hauled at the tons of stone. She prodded the air around them in case the doorway was still there. She squinted madly, trying to see it.



Tiffany stood under the stars, alone, and tried not to cry.



“What a shame,” said the Queen. “You’ve let everybody down, haven’t you?”



CHAPTER 13



Land Under Wave



The Queen walked over the turf toward Tiffany. Where she’d trodden, frost gleamed for a moment. The little part of Tiffany that was still thinking thought: That grass will be dead in the morning. She’s killing my turf.



“The whole of life is but a dream, when you come to think of it,” said the Queen in the same infuriatingly calm, pleasant voice. She sat down on the fallen stones. “You humans are such dreamers. You dream that you’re clever. You dream that you’re important. You dream that you’re special. You know, you’re almost better than dromes. You’re certainly more imaginative. I have to thank you.”



“What for?” said Tiffany, looking at her boots. Terror clamped her body in red-hot wires. There wasn’t anywhere to run to.



“I never realized how wonderful your world is,” said the Queen. “I mean, the dromes…well, they’re not much more than a kind of walking sponge, really. Their world is ancient. It’s nearly dead. They’re not really creative anymore. With a little help from me, your people could be a lot better. Because, you see, you dream all the time. You, especially, dream all the time. Your picture of the world is a landscape with you in the middle of it, isn’t it? Wonderful. Look at you, in that rather horrible dress and those clumpy boots. You dreamed you could invade my world with a frying pan. You had this dream about Brave Girl Rescuing Little Brother. You thought you were the heroine of a story. And then you left him behind. You know, I think being hit by a billion tons of seawater must be like having a mountain of iron drop on your head, don’t you?”