The Wee Free Men

There were odd carvings in the chalk, too, which the shepherds sometimes weeded when they were out on the downs with the flocks and there was not a lot to do. The chalk was only a few inches under the turf. Hoofprints could last a season, but the carvings had lasted for thousands of years. They were pictures of horses and giants, but the strange thing was that you couldn't see them properly from anywhere on the ground. They looked as if they'd been made for viewers in the sky.

And then there were the weird places, like Old Man's Forge, which was just four big flat rocks placed so they made a kind of half-buried hut in the side of a mound. It was only a few feet deep. It didn't look anything special, but if you shouted your name into it, it was several seconds before the echo came back.

There were signs of people everywhere. The Chalk had been important.

Tiffany left the shearing sheds way behind. No one was watching. Sheared sheep took no notice at all of a girl moving without her feet touching the ground.

The lowlands dropped away behind her and now she was properly on the downs. Only the occasional baa of a sheep or scream of a buzzard disturbed a busy silence, made up of bee buzzes and breezes and the sound of a ton of grass growing every minute.

On either side of Tiffany the Nac Mac Feegles ran in a spread-out ragged line, staring grimly ahead.

They passed some of the mounds without stopping, and ran up and down the sides of shallow valleys without a pause. And it was then that Tiffany saw a landmark ahead.

It was a small flock of sheep. There were only a few, freshly sheared, but there were always a handful of sheep at this place now. Strays would turn up there, and lambs would find their way to it when they'd lost their mothers.

This was a magic place.

There wasn't much to see now, just the iron wheels sinking into the turf and the pot-bellied stove with its short chimney...

On the day Granny Aching died, the men had cut and lifted the turf around the hut and stacked it neatly some way away. Then they'd dug a deep hole in the chalk, six feet deep and six feet long, lifting out the chalk in great damp blocks.

Thunder and Lightning had watched them carefully. They didn't whine or bark. They seemed more interested than upset.

Granny Aching had been wrapped in a woollen blanket, with a tuft of raw wool pinned to it. That was a special shepherd thing. It was there to tell any gods who might get involved that the person being buried there was a shepherd, and spent a lot of time on the hills, and what with lambing and one thing and another couldn't always take much time out for religion, there being no churches or temples up there, and therefore it was generally hoped that the gods would understand and look kindly on them. Granny Aching, it had to be said, had never been seen to pray to anyone or anything in her life, and it was agreed by all that, even now, she wouldn't have any time for a god who didn't understand that lambing came first.

The chalk had been put back over her and Granny Aching, who always said that the hills were in her bones, now had her bones in the hills.

Then they burned the hut. That wasn't usual, but her father had said that there wasn't a shepherd anywhere on the Chalk who'd use it now.

Thunder and Lightning wouldn't come when he called, and he knew better than to be angry, so they were left sitting quite contentedly by the glowing embers of the hut.