The Wee Free Men (21 page)

“Weewee man!” yelled Wentworth.

The pictsies glanced at the trees and then at Tiffany.

“Do it!” she yelled, so loudly that some of them flinched. “Right now! Do what I tell you! There’s a better way!”

“Ye canna cross a hag, Rob,” muttered William.

“I’m going to get you home!” snapped Tiffany. I hope, she added to herself. But she’d seen a small, round, pale face staring at them around a tree trunk. There was a drome in those trees.

“Ach, aye, but—” Rob Anybody glanced past Tiffany and added: “Aw no, look at that…”

There was a pale dot in front of the racing line of monstrousness.

Sneebs was making a break for it. His arms pumped like pistons. His little legs seemed to spin. His cheeks were like balloons.

The tide of nightmares rolled over him and kept coming.

Rob sheathed his sword. “Ye heard oour kelda, lads!” he shouted. “Grab her! We’rrre offski!”

Tiffany was lifted up. Feegles raised the unconscious Roland. And everyone ran for the trees.

Tiffany pulled her hand out of her apron pocket and looked at the crumpled wrapper of Jolly Sailor tobacco. It was something to focus on, to remind her of a dream…

People
said
you could see the sea from the very top of the downs, but Tiffany had stared hard on a fine winter’s day, when the air was clear, and seen nothing but the hazy blue of distance. But the sea on the Jolly Sailor packet was deep blue, with white crests on the waves. It
was
the sea, for Tiffany.

It had looked like a
small
drome in the trees. That meant it wasn’t very powerful. She hoped so. She had to hope so….

The trees got closer. So did the ring of nightmares. Some of the sounds were horrible, of cracking bones and crushing rocks and stinging insects and screaming cats, getting nearer and nearer and nearer.

T
here was sand around her, and white waves crashing, and water draining off the pebble beach and sounding like an old woman sucking a hard mint.

“Crivens! Where are we noo?” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye, and why’re we all lookin’ like yellow mushrooms?” Rob Anybody added.

Tiffany looked down and giggled. Every pictsie was wearing a Jolly Sailor outfit, with an oilskin coat and a huge yellow oilskin rain hat that covered most of his face. They started to wander about, bumping into one another.

My
dream! Tiffany thought. The drome uses what it can find in your head…but this is
my
dream. I can
use
it.

Wentworth had gone quiet. He was staring at the waves.

There was a boat pulled up on the beach. As one pictsie, or small yellow mushroom, the Nac Mac Feegle were flocking toward it and clambering up the sides.

“What are you doing?” said Tiffany.

“Best if we wuz leavin’,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s a good dream ye’ve found us, but we canna stay here.”

“But we should be safe here!”

“Ach, the Quin finds a way in everywhere,” said Rob, as a hundred pictsies raised an oar. “Dinna fash yersel’, we know all about boats. Did ye no’ see Not-totally-wee-Georgie pike fishin’ wi’ Wee Bobby in the stream the other day? We is no strangers to the piscatorial an’ nautical arts, ye ken.”

And they did indeed seem to know about boats. The oars were heaved into the oarlocks, and a party of Feegles pushed the boat down the stones and into the waves.

“Now you just hand us the wee bairn,” shouted Rob Anybody from the stern. Uncertainly, her feet slipping on the wet stones, Tiffany waded through the cold water and handed Wentworth over.

He seemed to think it was very funny.

“Weewee mens!” he yelled as they lowered him into the boat. It was his only joke, so he wasn’t going to stop.

“Aye, that’s right,” said Rob Anybody, tucking him under the seat. “Noo just you bide there like a good boy and no yellin’ for sweeties or Uncle Rob’ll gie ye a skelpin’ across the earhole, okay?”

Wentworth chuckled.

Tiffany ran back up the beach and hauled Roland to his feet. He opened his eyes and looked blearily at her.

“Wha’s happening?” he said. “I had this strange drea—” and then he shut his eyes again and sagged.

“Get in the boat!” Tiffany shouted, dragging him across the shingle.

“Crivens, are we takin’ this wee streak o’ uselessness?” said Rob, grabbing Roland’s trousers and heaving him aboard.

“Of course!” Tiffany hauled herself in afterward and landed in the bottom of the boat as a wave took it. The oars creaked and
splashed, and the boat jerked forward. It jolted once or twice, as more waves hit it, and then began to plunge across the sea. The pictsies were strong, after all. Even though each oar was a battleground as pictsies hung from it, or piled up on one another’s shoulders or just heaved anything they could grasp, both oars were almost bending as they were dragged through the water.

Tiffany picked herself up and tried to ignore the sudden uncertain feeling in her stomach.

“Head for the lighthouse!” she said.

“Aye, I ken that,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s the only place there is! And the Quin disna like light.” He grinned. “It’s a good dream, lady. Have ye no’ looked at the sky?”

“It’s just a blue sky,” said Tiffany.

“It’s no’
exactly
a sky,” said Rob Anybody. “Look behind ye.”

Tiffany turned. It was a blue sky. Very blue. But above the retreating beach, halfway up the sky, was a band of yellow. It looked a long way away, and hundreds of miles across. And in the middle of it, looming over the world as big as a galaxy and gray-blue with distance, was a life preserver.

On it, in letters larger than the moon, were the words:

“We
are
in the label?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody.

“But the sea feels…real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!”

“Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.” Rob nodded. “Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ and running aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.”

“We
are
in the label?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody.

“But the sea feels…real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!”

“Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.” Rob nodded. “Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ and running aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.”

Tiffany took the grubby label out of her pocket and stared at it again. There was the life preserver, and the lighthouse. But the Jolly Sailor himself wasn’t there. What
was
there, so tiny as to be little bigger than a dot on the printed sea, was a tiny rowboat.

She looked up. There were storm clouds in the sky in front of the huge, hazy life preserver. They were long and ragged, curling as they came.

“It didna take her long to find a way in,” muttered William.

“No,” said Tiffany, “but this is my dream. I know how it goes. Keep rowing!”

Tangling and tumbling, some of the clouds passed overhead and then swooped toward the sea. They vanished beneath the waves like a waterspout in reverse.

It began to rain hard, so hard that a haze of mist rose over the sea.

“Is that it?” Tiffany wondered. “Is that all she can do?”

“I doot it,” said Rob Anybody. “Bend them oars, lads!”

The boat shot forward, bouncing through the rain from wavetop to wavetop.

But, against all normal rules, it was now trying to go uphill. The water was mounding up and up, and the boat washed backward in the streaming surf.

Something was rising. Something white was pushing the seas aside. Great waterfalls poured off the shining dome that climbed toward the storm sky.

It rose higher, and still there was more. And eventually there was an eye. It was tiny compared to the mountainous head above it, and it rolled in its socket and focused on the tiny boat.

“Now,
that’s
a heid that’d be a day’s work e’en for Big Yan,” said Rob Anybody. “I reckon we’d have to come back tomorrow! Row, boys!”

“It’s a dream of mine,” said Tiffany, as calmly as she could manage. “It’s the whale fish.”

I never dreamed the smell, though, she added to herself. But here it is, a huge, solid, world-filling smell of salt and water and fish and ooze—

“Whut does it eat?” Daft Wullie asked.

“Ah, I know that,” said Tiffany, as the boat rocked on the swell. “Whales aren’t dangerous, because they just eat very small things…”

“Row like the blazes, lads!”
Rob Anybody yelled.

“How d’ye ken it only eats wee stuff?” said Daft Wullie as the whale fish’s mouth began to open.

“I paid a whole cucumber once for a lesson on beasts of the deep,” said Tiffany as a wave washed over them. “Whales don’t even have proper teeth!”

There was a creaking sound and a gust of fishy halitosis about the size of a typhoon, and the view was full of enormous, pointy teeth.

“Aye?” said Wullie. “Weel, no offense meant, but I dinna think this beastie went to the same school as ye!”

The surge of water was pushing them away. And Tiffany could see the whole of the head now, and in a way she couldn’t possibly describe, the whale looked like the Queen. The Queen was
there
, somewhere.

The anger came back.

“This is
my
dream,” she shouted at the sky. “I’ve dreamed it dozens of times! You’re not allowed in here! And whales don’t eat people! Everyone who isn’t very stupid knows that!”

A tail the size of a field rose and slapped down on the sea. The whale shot forward.

Rob Anybody threw off his yellow hat and drew his sword.

“Ach, weel, we tried,” he said. “This wee beastie’s gonna get the worst belly ache there ever wuz!”

“Aye, we’ll cut oour way out!” shouted Daft Wullie.

“No, keep rowing!” said Tiffany.

“It’s ne’er be said that the Nac Mac Feegle turned their back on a foe!” Rob yelled.

“But you’re rowing
facing
backward!” Tiffany pointed out.

The pictsie looked crestfallen. “Oh, aye, I hadna thought o’ it like that,” he said, sitting down again.

“Just row!” Tiffany insisted. “We’re nearly at the lighthouse!”

Grumbling, because even if they
were
facing the right way, they were still going the wrong way, the pictsies hauled on the oars.

“That’s a great big heid he’s got there, ye ken,” said Rob Anybody. “How big would you say that heid is, gonnagle?”

“Ach, I’d say it’s
verrra
big, Rob,” said William, who was with the team on the other oar. “Indeed, I might commit myself to sayin’ it’s enorrrrmous.”

“Ye’d go as far as that, would ye?”

“Oh, aye. Enorrrrmous is fully justified.”

It’s nearly on us, Tiffany thought.

This has got to work. It’s my dream. Any moment. Any moment now…

“An’ how near us would you say it is, then?” asked Rob conversationally, as the boat wallowed and jerked just ahead of the whale.

“That’s a verrra good question, Rob,” said William. “And I’d answer it by sayin’ it’s verrra close indeed.”

Any moment now, thought Tiffany. I know Miss Tick said you
shouldn’t believe in your dreams, but she meant you shouldn’t just
hope.

Er…any moment now, I…hope. He’s never missed….

“In fact I’d go so farrr as to say
exceedingly
close—” William began.

Tiffany swallowed and hoped that the whale wouldn’t. There was only about thirty yards of water between the teeth and the boat.

And then it was filled with a wooden wall that blurred as it went past, making a
zipzipzip
noise.

Tiffany looked up, her mouth open. White sails flashed across the storm clouds, pouring rain like waterfalls. She looked up at rigging and ropes and sailors lined up on the spars, and cheered.

And then the stern of the Jolly Sailor’s ship was disappearing into the rain and mist, but not before Tiffany saw the big bearded figure at the wheel, dressed in yellow oilskins. He turned and waved just once, before the ship vanished into the murk.

She managed to stand up again, as the boat rocked in the swell, and yelled at the towering whale: “You’ve got to chase him! That’s how it has to work! You chase him, he chases you!
Granny Aching said so!
You can’t
not
do it and still be the whale fish! This is
my
dream! My rules! I’ve had more practice at it than you!”

“Big fishy!” yelled Wentworth.

That was more surprising than the whale. Tiffany stared at her little brother as the boat rocked again.

“Big fishy!” said Wentworth again.

“That’s right!” Tiffany said, delighted. “Big fishy! And what makes it
particularly
interesting is that a whale isn’t a fish! It is in fact a mammal, just like a cow!”

Did you just say that? said her Second Thoughts, as all the
pictsies stared at her and the boat spun in the surf. The first time he’s ever said anything that wasn’t about sweeties or weewee and you just
corrected
him?

Tiffany looked at the whale. It was having trouble. But it was
the
whale, the whale she’d dreamed about many times after Granny Aching had told her that story, and not even the Queen could control a story like that.

It turned reluctantly in the water and dived in the wake of the Jolly Sailor’s ship.

“Big fishy gone!” said Wentworth.

“No, it’s a mammal—” Tiffany’s mouth said, before she could stop it.

The pictsies were still staring at her.

“It’s just that he ought to get it right,” she mumbled, ashamed of herself. “It’s a mistake lots of people make….”

You’re going to turn into somebody like Miss Tick, said her Second Thoughts. Do you really want that?

“Yes,” said a voice, and Tiffany realized that it was hers again. The anger rose up, joyfully. “Yes! I’m
me
! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don’t understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I
think
! And I always have a piece of string! That’s the kind of person I am!”

She stopped. Even Wentworth was staring at her now. He blinked.

“Big water cow gone,” he suggested meekly.

“That’s right! Good boy!” said Tiffany. “When we get home, you can have
one
sweet!”