Terry Pratchett: The Wee Free Men

'Do you want any help?'

'If it's my trouble, I'll get out of it,' said Tiffany. She wanted to say: Yes, yes! I'm going to need help! I don't know what's going to happen when my father gets here! The Baron's probably got really angry! But I don't want them to think I can't deal with my own problems! I ought to be able to cope!

'That's right,' said Mistress Weatherwax. Tiffany wondered if the witch could read minds.

'Minds? No,' said Mistress Weatherwax, climbing onto her broomstick. 'Faces, yes. Come here, young lady.'

Tiffany obeyed.

'The thing about witchcraft,' said Mistress Weatherwax, 'is that it's not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterwards you spend years findin' out how you passed it. It's a bit like life in that respect.' She reached out and gently raised Tiffany's chin so that she could look into her face. 'I see you opened your eyes,' she said.

'Yes.'

'Good. Many people never do. Times ahead might be a little tricky, even so. You'll need this.'

She stretched out a hand and made a circle in the air around Tiffany's hair, then brought her hand up over the head while making little movements with her forefinger.

Tiffany raised her hands to her head. For a moment she thought there was nothing there, and then they touched... something. It was more like a sensation in the air; if you weren't expecting it to be there, your fingers passed straight through.

'Is it really there?' she said.

'Who knows?' said the witch. 'It's virtually a pointy hat. No one else will know it's there. It might be a comfort.'

'You mean it just exists in my head?' said Tiffany.

'You've got lots of things in your head. That doesn't mean they aren't real. Best not to ask me too many questions.'

'What happened to the toad?' said Miss Tick, who did ask questions.

'It's gone to live with the Wee Free Men,' said Tiffany. 'It turned out it used to be a lawyer.'

'You've given a clan of the Nac Mac Feegle their own lawyer?' said Mrs Ogg. 'That'll make the world tremble. Still, I always say the occasional tremble does you good.'

'Come, sisters, we must away,' said Miss Tick, who had climbed on the other broomstick behind Mrs Ogg.

'There's no need for that sort of talk,' said Mrs Ogg. 'That's theatre talk, that is. Cheerio, Tiff. We'll see you again.'

Her stick rose gently in the air. From the stick of Mistress Weatherwax, though, there was merely a sad little noise, like the thwop of Miss Tick's hat point. The broomstick went kshugagugah.

Mistress Weatherwax sighed. 'It's them dwarfs,' she said. They say they've repaired it, oh yes, and it starts first time in their workshop—'

They heard the sound of distant hooves. With surprising speed, Mistress Weatherwax swung herself off the stick, grabbed it firmly in both hands, and ran away across the turf, skirts billowing behind her.

She was a speck in the distance when Tiffany's father came over the brow of the hill on one of the farm horses. He hadn't even stopped to put the leather shoes on it; great slices of earth flew up as hooves the size of large soup plates, [Probably about eleven inches across. Tiffany didn't measure them this time.] each one shod with iron, bit into the turf.

Tiffany heard a faint kshugagugahvwwoooom behind her as he leaped off the horse.

She was surprised to see him laughing and crying at the same time.

It was all a bit of a dream.

Tiffany found that a very useful thing to say. It's hard to remember, it was all a bit of a dream. It was all a bit of a dream, I can't be certain.

The overjoyed Baron, however, was very certain. Obviously this—this Queen woman, whoever she was, had been stealing children but Roland had beaten her, oh yes, and helped these two young children to get back as well.

Her mother had insisted on Tiffany going to bed, even though it was broad daylight. Actually, she didn't mind. She was tired, and lay under the covers in that nice pink world halfway between asleep and awake.

She heard the Baron and her father talking downstairs. She heard the story being woven between them as they tried to make sense of it all. Obviously the girl had been very brave (this was the Baron speaking) but, well, she was nine, wasn't she? And didn't even know how to use a sword! Whereas Roland had fencing lessons at his school...

And so it went on. There were other things she heard her parents discussing later, when the Baron had gone. There was the way Ratbag now lived on the roof, for example.

Tiffany lay in bed and smelled the ointment her mother had rubbed into her temples. Tiffany must have got hit on the head, she'd said, because of the way she kept on touching it.

So... Roland with the beefy face was the hero, was he? And she was just like the stupid princess who broke her ankle and fainted all the time? That was completely unfair!

She reached out to the little table beside her bed where she'd put the invisible hat. Her mother had put down a cup of broth right through it, but it was still there. Tiffany's fingers felt, very faintly, the roughness of the brim.

We never ask for any reward, she thought. Besides, it was her secret, all of it. No one else knew about the Wee Free Men. Admittedly Wentworth had taken to running through the house with a tablecloth round his waist shouting, 'Weewee mens! I'll scone you in the boot!' but Mrs Aching was still so glad to see him back, and so happy that he was talking about things other than sweets, that she wasn't paying too much attention to what he was talking about.

No, she couldn't tell anyone. They'd never believe her, and suppose that they did, and went up and poked around in the pictsies' mound? She couldn't let that happen.

What would Granny Aching have done?

Granny Aching would have said nothing. Granny Aching often said nothing. She just smiled to herself, and puffed on her pipe, and waited until the right time...

Tiffany smiled to herself.

She slept, and didn't dream.

And a day went past.

And another day.

On the third day, it rained. Tiffany went into the kitchen when no one was about and took down the china shepherdess from the shelf. She put it in a sack, then slipped out of the house and ran up onto the downs.

The worst of the weather was going either side of the Chalk, which cut through the clouds like the prow of a ship. But when Tiffany reached the spot where an old stove and four iron wheels stood out of the grass, and cut a square of turf, and carefully chipped out a hole for the china shepherdess, and then put the turf back... it was raining hard enough to soak it in and give it a chance of surviving. It seemed the right thing to do. And she was sure she caught a whiff of tobacco.

Then she went to the pictsies' mound. She'd worried about that. She knew they were there, didn't she? So, somehow, going to check that they were there would be... sort of... showing that she doubted if they would be, wouldn't it? They were busy people. They had lots to do. They had the old kelda to mourn. They were probably very busy. That's what she told herself. It wasn't because she kept wondering if there really might be nothing down the hole but rabbits. It wasn't that at all.

She was the kelda. She had a duty.

She heard music. She heard voices. And then sudden silence as she peered into the gloom.

She carefully took a bottle of Special Sheep Liniment out of her sack and let it slide into darkness.

Tiffany walked away, and heard the faint music start up again.

She did wave at a buzzard, circling lazily under the clouds, and she was sure a tiny dot waved back.

On the fourth day, Tiffany made butter, and did her chores. She did have help.