The Wee Free Men (22 page)

She saw the massed ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle still looking at her with worried expressions.

“Is it okay wi’ you if we get on?” asked Rob Anybody, holding up a nervous hand. “Before yon whale fi—before yon whale cow comes back?”

Tiffany looked past them. The lighthouse wasn’t far. A little jetty stretched out from its tiny island.

“Yes, please. Er…thank you,” she said, calming down a bit. The ship and the whale had vanished into the rain, and the sea was merely lapping at the shore.

A drome was sitting on the rocks with its pale, fat legs sticking out in front of it. It was staring out to sea and didn’t appear to notice the approaching boat. It thinks it’s home, Tiffany thought. I’ve given it a dream it likes.

Pictsies poured onto the jetty and tied up the boat.

“Okay, we’re here,” said Rob Anybody. “We’ll just chop yon creature’s heid off and we’ll be right oout o’ here…”

“Don’t!” said Tiffany.

“But it—”

“Leave it alone. Just…leave it alone, all right? It’s not interested.” And it knows about the sea, she added to herself. It’s probably homesick for the sea. That’s why it’s such a
real
dream. I’d have never have got it right by myself.

A crab crawled out of the surf by the drome’s feet and settled down to dream crab dreams.

It looks as though a drome can get lost in its own dream, she thought. I wonder if it’ll ever wake up?

She turned to the Nac Mac Feegle. “In my dream I always wake up when I reach the lighthouse,” she said.

The pictsies looked up at the red-and-white tower and, as one Feegle, drew their swords.

“We dinna trust the Quin,” said Rob. “She’ll let ye think ye’re
safe, and just when ye’ve dropped your guard, she’ll leap oout. She’ll be waitin’ behind the door, ye can bet on it. Ye’ll let us go in first.”

It was an instruction, not a question. Tiffany nodded and watched the Nac Mac Feegle swarm over the rocks toward the tower.

Alone on the jetty, except for Wentworth and the unconscious Roland, she lifted the toad out of her pocket. It opened its yellow eyes and stared at the sea.

“Either I’m dreaming or I’m on a beach,” it said. “And toads don’t dream.”

“In my dream they can,” said Tiffany. “And this is
my
dream.”

“Then it is an extremely dangerous one!” said the toad ungratefully.

“No, it’s lovely,” said Tiffany. “It’s wonderful. Look at the way the light dances on the waves.”

“Where are the notices warning people they could drown?” complained the toad. “No life preservers or shark nets. Oh, dear. Do I see a qualified lifeguard? I think not. Supposing someone was to—”

“It’s a beach,” said Tiffany. “Why are you talking like this?”

“I—I don’t know,” said the toad. “Can you put me down, please? I feel a headache coming on.”

Tiffany put it down, and it shuffled into some seaweed. After a while she heard it eating something.

The sea was calm.

It was peaceful.

It was exactly the moment anyone sensible should distrust.

But nothing happened. It was followed by nothing else happening. Wentworth picked up a pebble from the beach and put it in
his mouth, on the basis that anything might be a candy.

Then, suddenly, there were noises from the lighthouse. Tiffany heard muffled shouts, and thuds, and once or twice the sound of breaking glass. At one point there was a noise like something heavy falling down a long spiral staircase and hitting every step on the way.

The door opened. The Nac Mac Feegle came out. They looked satisfied.

“Nae problemo,” said Rob Anybody. “No one there.”

“But there was a lot of noise!”

“Oh, aye. We had to make sure,” said Daft Wullie.

“Weewee men!” shouted Wentworth.

“I’ll wake up when I go through the door,” said Tiffany, pulling Roland out of the boat. “I always do. It must work. This is my dream.” She hauled the boy upright. “Can you bring Wentworth?”

“Aye.”

“And you won’t get lost or—or drunk or anything?”

Rob Anybody looked offended. “We ne’er get lost!” he said. “We always ken where we are! It’s just sometimes mebbe we aren’t sure where everything else is, but it’s no’ our fault if
everything else
gets lost! The Nac Mac Feegle are never lost!”

“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?”