The Wee Free Men

Next day, when the ashes were cold and blowing across the raw chalk, everyone went up onto the downs and with very great care put the turf back, so all that was left to see were the iron wheels on their axles, and the pot-bellied stove.

At which point—so everyone said—the two sheepdogs had looked up, their ears pricking, and had trotted away over the turf and were never seen again.

The pictsies carrying her slowed down gently, and Tiffany flailed her arms as they dropped her onto the grass. The sheep lumbered away slowly, then stopped and turned to watch her.

'Why're we stopping? Why're we stoppinghere? We've got to catch her!'

'Got to wait for Hamish, mistress,' said Rob Anybody.

'Why? Who's Hamish?'

'He might have the knowin' of where the Quin went with your wee laddie,' said Rob Anybody soothingly. 'We cannae just rush in, ye ken.'

A big, bearded Feegle raised his hand. 'Point o' order, Big Man. Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in.'

'Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye're just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin' to rush oout again straight awa'.'

Tiffany saw that all the Feegles were staring intently upwards, and paying her no attention at all.

Angry and puzzled, she sat down on one of the rusty wheels and looked at the sky. It was better than looking around. There was Granny Aching's grave somewhere around here, although you couldn't find it now, not precisely. The turf had healed.

There were a few little clouds above her and nothing else at all, except the distant circling dots of the buzzards.

There were always buzzards over the Chalk. The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching's chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today 'Granny's little lambs'. And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder 'Granny Aching cussin' '.

And it was said that some of the shepherds, if wolves were troublesome in the winter, or a prize ewe had got lost, would go to the site of the old hut in the hills and leave an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco, just in case...

Tiffany hesitated. Then she shut her eyes. I want that to be true, she whispered to herself. I want to know that other people think she hasn't really gone, too.

She looked under the wide rusted rim of the wheels and shivered. There was a brightly coloured little packet there.

She picked it up. It looked quite fresh, so it had probably been there for only a few days. There was the Jolly Sailor on the front, with his big grin and big yellow rain hat and big beard, with big blue waves crashing behind him.

Tiffany had learned about the sea from the Jolly Sailor wrappings. She'd heard it was big, and roared. There was a tower in the sea, which was a lighthouse that carried a big light on it at night to stop boats crashing into the rocks. In the pictures the beam of the lighthouse was a brilliant white. She knew about it so well she'd dreamed about it, and had woken up with the roar of the sea in her ears.

She'd heard one of her uncles say that if you looked at the tobacco label upside down then part of the hat and the sailor's ear and a bit of his collar made up a picture of a woman with no clothes on, but Tiffany had never been able to make it out and couldn't see what the point would be in any case.

She carefully pulled the label off the packet, and sniffed at it. It smelled of Granny. She felt her eyes begin to fill with tears. She'd never cried for Granny Aching before, never. She'd cried for dead lambs and cut fingers and for not getting her own way, but never for Granny. It hadn't seemed right.

And I'm not crying now, she thought, carefully putting the label in her apron pocket. Not for Granny being dead...

It was the smell. Granny Aching smelled of sheep, turpentine and Jolly Sailor tobacco. The three smells mixed together and became one smell which was, to Tiffany, the smell of the Chalk. It followed Granny Aching like a cloud, and it meant warmth, and silence, and a space around which the whole world revolved...

A shadow passed overhead. A buzzard was diving down from the sky towards the Nac Mac Feegle.

She leaped up and waved her arms. 'Run away! Duck! It'll kill you!'

They turned and looked at her for a moment as though she'd gone mad.