The Wee Free Men d(-2

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Metapahorrical?’ said Mrs Ogg, wrinkling her forehead.

  ‘She means metaphorical,’ mumbled Miss Tick.

  ‘It’s like stories,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s all right. I worked it out. This is the school, isn’t it? The magic place? The world. Here. And you don’t realize it until you look. Do you know the pictsies think this world is heaven? We just don’t look. You can’t give lessons on witchcraft. Not properly. It’s all about how you are… you, I suppose.’

  ‘Nicely said,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘You’re sharp. But there’s magic, too. You’ll pick that up. It don’t take much intelligence, otherwise wizards wouldn’t be able to do it.’

  ‘You’ll need a job, too,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘There’s no money in witchcraft. Can’t do magic for yourself, see? Cast-iron rule.’

  ‘I make good cheese,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Cheese, eh?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Hmm. Yes. Cheese is good. But do you know anything about medicines? Midwifery? That’s a good portable skill.’

  ‘Well, I’ve helped deliver difficult lambs,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I saw my brother being born. They didn’t bother to turn me out. It didn’t look too difficult. But I think cheese is probably easier, and less noisy.’

  ‘Cheese is good,’ Mistress Weatherwax repeated, nodding. ‘Cheese is alive.’

  ‘And what do you really do?’ said Tiffany.

  The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then:

  ‘We look to… the edges,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘There’re a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong… an’ they need watchin’. We watch ‘em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important.’

  ‘People give us stuff, mind you. People can be very gen’rous to witches,’ said Mrs Ogg, happily. ‘On bakin’ days in our village, sometimes I can’t move for cake. There’s ways and ways of not askin’, if you get my meaning. People like to see a happy witch.’

  ‘But down here people think witches are bad!’ said Tiffany, and her Second Thoughts added: Remember how rarely Granny Aching ever had to buy her own tobacco?

  ‘It’s amazin’ what people can get used to,’ said Mrs Ogg. ‘You just have to start slow.’

  ‘And we have to hurry,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. There’s a man riding up here on a farm horse. Fair hair, red face—’

  ‘It sounds like my father!’

  ‘Well, he’s making the poor thing gallop,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Quick, now. You want to learn the skills? When can you leave home?’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Don’t the girls here go off to work as maids and things?’ said Mrs Ogg.

  ‘Oh, yes. When they’re a bit older than me.’

  ‘Well, when you’re a bit older than you. Miss Tick here will come and find you,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. Miss Tick nodded. ‘There’re elderly witches up in the mountains who’ll pass on what they know in exchange for a bit of help around the cottage. This place will be watched over while you’re gone, you may depend on it. In the meantime you’ll get three meals a day, your own bed, use of broomstick… that’s the way we do it. All right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, grinning happily. The wonderful moment was passing too quickly for all the questions she wanted to ask. ‘Yes! But, er…’

  ‘Yes?’ said Mrs Ogg.

  ‘I don’t have to dance around with no clothes on or anything like that, do I? Only I heard rumours—’

  Mistress Weatherwax rolled her eyes.

  Mrs Ogg grinned cheerfully. ‘Well, that procedure does have something to recommend it—’ she began.

  ‘No, you don’t have to!’ snapped Mistress Weatherwax. ‘No cottage made of sweets, no cackling and no dancing!’

  ‘Unless you want to,’ said Mrs Ogg, standing up. ‘There’s no harm in an occasional cackle, if the mood takes you that way. I’d teach you a good one right now, but we really ought to be going.’

  ‘But… but how did you manage it?’ said Miss Tick to Tiffany. ‘This is all chalk! You’ve become a witch on chalk? How?’

  ‘That’s all you know, Perspicacia Tick,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘The bones of the hills is flint. It’s hard and sharp and useful. King of stones.’ She picked up her broomstick, and turned back to Tiffany. ‘Will you get into trouble, do you think?’ she said.

  ‘I might do,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘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 plates5, 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 usefu
l 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.

  ‘And now I want you to go and feed the chickens,’ she said to Wentworth. ‘What is it I want you to do?’

  ‘Fee’ the cluck-clucks,’ said Wentworth.

  ‘Chickens,’ said Tiffany, severely.

  ‘Chickens,’ said Wentworth obediently.

  ‘And wipe your nose not on your sleeve! I gave you a handkerchief. And on the way back see if you can carry a whole log, will you?’

  ‘Ach, crivens,’ muttered Wentworth.

  ‘And what is it we don’t say?’ said Tiffany. ‘We don’t say the—’

  ‘—the crivens word,’ Wentworth muttered.

  ‘And we don’t say it in front of—’

  ‘—in fron’ of Mummy,’ said Wentworth.

  ‘Good. And then when I’ve finished we’ll have time to go down to the river.’

  Wentworth brightened up.

  ‘Weewee mens?’ he said.

  Tiffany didn’t reply immediately.

  Tiffany hadn’t seen a single Feegle since she’d been home.

  ‘There might be,’ she said. ‘But they’re probably very busy. They’ve got to find another kelda, and… well, they’re very busy. I expect.’

  ‘Weewee men say hit you in the head, fishface!’ said Wentworth happily.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Tiffany, feeling like a parent. ‘Now please go and feed the chickens and get the eggs.’

  When he’d wandered away, carrying the egg basket in both hands, Tiffany turned out some butter onto the marble slab and picked up the paddles to pat it into, well, a pat of butter. Then she’d stamp it with one of the wooden stamps. People appreciated a little picture on their butter.

  As she began to shape the butter she was aware of a shadow in the doorway, and turned.

  It was Roland.

  He looked at her, his face even redder than usual. He was twiddling his very expensive hat nervously, just like Rob Anybody did.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Look, about… well, about all that… about Roland began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look, I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t lie to anyone or anything,’ he blurted out. ‘But my father just sort of assumed I’d been a hero and he just wouldn’t listen to anything I said even after I told him how… how…’

  ‘—helpful I’d been?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘Yes… I mean, no! He said, he said, he said it was lucky for you I was there, he said—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tiffany, picking up the butter paddles again.

  ‘And he just kept telling everyone how brave I’d been and—’

  ‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ said Tiffany. The little paddles went patpatpat on the fresh butter.

  Roland’s mouth opened and shut for a moment.

  ‘You mean you don’t mind?’ he said at last.

  ‘No. I don’t mind,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘But it’s not fair!’

  ‘We’re the only ones who know the truth,’ said Tiffany.

  Patapatpat. Roland stared at the fat, rich butter as she calmly patted it into shape.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Er… you won’t tell anyone, will you? I mean, you’ve got every right to, but—’

  Patapatapat…

  ‘No one would believe me,’ said Tiffany.

  ‘I did try,’ said Roland. ‘Honestly. I really did.’

  I expect you did, Tiffany thought. But you’re not very clever and the Baron certainly is a man without First Sight. He sees the world the way he wants to see it.

  ‘One day you’ll be Baron, won’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Well, yes. One day. But look, are you really a witch?’

  ‘When you’re Baron you’ll be good at it, I expect?’ said Tiffany, turning the butter around. ‘Fair and generous and decent? You’ll pay good wages and look afte
r the old people? You wouldn’t let people turn an old lady out of her house?’

  ‘Well, I hope I—’

  Tiffany turned to face him, a butter paddle in each hand.

  ‘Because I’ll be there, you see. You’ll look up and see my eye on you. I’ll be there on the edge of the crowd. All the time. I’ll be watching everything, because I come from a long line of Aching people and this is my land. But you can be the Baron for us and I hope you’re a good one. If you are not… there will be a reckoning.’

  ‘Look, I know you were… were—’ Roland began, going red in the face.

  ‘Very helpful?’ said Tiffany.

  ‘—but you can’t talk to me like that, you know!’

  Tiffany was sure she heard, up in the roof and on the very edge of hearing, someone say: ‘Ach, crivens, what a wee snotter…’

  She shut her eyes for a moment, and then, heart pounding, pointed a butter paddle at one of the empty buckets.

  ‘Bucket, fill yourself!’ she commanded.

  It blurred, and then sloshed. Water dripped down the side.

  Roland stared at it. Tiffany gave him one of her sweetest smiles, which could be quite scary.

  ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ she said.

  He turned to her, face pale. ‘No one would believe me…’ he stammered.

  ‘Aye,’ said Tiffany. ‘So we understand one another. Isn’t that nice? And now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to finish this and make a start on some cheese.’

  ‘Cheese? But you… you could do anything you wanted!’ Roland burst out.

  ‘And right now I want to make cheese,’ said Tiffany calmly. ‘Go away.’

  ‘My father owns this farm!’ said Roland, and then realized he’d said that out loud.

  There were two little but strangely loud clicks as Tiffany put down the butter paddles and turned round.

  ‘That was a very brave thing you just said,’ she said, ‘but I expect you’re sorry you said it, now that you’ve had a really good think?’

  Roland, who had shut his eyes, nodded his head.

  ‘Good,’ said Tiffany. ‘Today I’m making cheese. Tomorrow I may do something else. And in a while, maybe, I won’t be here and you’ll wonder: Where is she? But part of me will always be here, always. I’ll always be thinking about this place. I’ll have it in my eye. And I will be back. Now, go away!’