The Wee Free Men

Perhaps, Tiffany thought wretchedly, the old lady had seen it as a sort of insult. Perhaps she thought she was being told that this was what a shepherdess should look like. She shouldn't be an old lady in a muddy dress and big boots, with an old sack around her shoulders to keep the rain off. A shepherdess should sparkle like a starry night. Tiffany hadn't meant to, she'd never meant to, but perhaps she had been telling Granny that she wasn't... right.

And then a few months after that Granny had died, and in the years since then everything had gone wrong. Wentworth had been born, and then the Baron's son had vanished, and then there had been that bad winter when Mrs Snapperly died in the snow.

Tiffany kept worrying about the statue. She couldn't talk about it. Everyone else was busy, or not interested. Everyone was edgy. They'd have said that worrying about a silly statue was... silly.

Several times she nearly smashed the shepherdess, but she didn't because people would notice.

She wouldn't have given something as wrong as that to Granny Aching now, of course. She'd grown up.

She remembered that the old lady would smile oddly, sometimes, when she looked at the statue. If only she'd said something. But Granny liked silence.

And now it turned out that she'd made friends with a lot of little blue men, who walked the hills looking after the sheep, because they liked her, too. Tiffany blinked.

It made a kind of sense. In memory of Granny Aching, the men left the tobacco. And in memory of Granny Aching, the Nac Mac Feegle minded the sheep. It all worked, even if it wasn't magic. But it took Granny away.

'Daft Wullie?' she said, staring hard at the struggling pictsie and trying not to cry.

'Mmph?'

'Is it true what Rob Anybody told me?'

'Mmph!' Daft Wullie's eyebrows went up and down furiously.

'Mr Feegle, you can please take your hand away from his mouth,' said Tiffany. Daft Wullie was released. Rob Anybody had looked worried, but Daft Wullie was terrified. He dragged his bonnet off and stood holding it in his hands, as if it was some kind of shield.

'Is all that true, Daft Wullie?' said Tiffany.

'Oh waily waily—'

'Just a simple yes or— A simple aye or nay, please.'

'Aye! It is!' blurted out Daft Wullie. 'Oh waily waily—'

'Yes, thank you,' said Tiffany, sniffing and trying to blink the tears away. 'All right. I understand.'

The Feegles eyed her cautiously.

'Ye're nae gonna get nasty aboot it?' said Rob Anybody.

'No. It all... works.'

She heard it echo around the cavern, the sound of hundreds of little men sighing with relief.

'She dinnae turn me intae a pismire!' said Daft Wullie, grinning happily at the rest of the pictsies. 'Hey, lads, I talked wi' the hag and she dinnae e'en look at me crosswise! She smiled at me!' He beamed at Tiffany and went on: 'An' d'ye ken, mistress, that if'n you hold the baccy label upside-doon then part o' the sailor's bonnet and his ear became a lady wi' nae mmph mmph...'

'Ach, there I goes again, accidentally nearly throttlin' ye,' said Rob Anybody, his hand clamping over Wullie's mouth.

Tiffany opened her mouth, but stopped when her ears tickled strangely.

In the roof of the cave, several bats woke up and hastily flew out of the smoke hole.

Some of the Feegles were busy on the far side of the chamber. What Tiffany had thought was a strange round stone was being rolled aside, revealing a large hole.

Now her ears squelched and felt as though all the wax was running out. The Feegles were forming up in two rows, leading to the hole.

Tiffany prodded the toad. 'Do I want to know what a pismire is?' she whispered.

'It's an ant,' said the toad.

'Oh? I'm... slightly surprised. And this sort of high-pitched noise?'

'I'm a toad. We're not good at ears. But it's probably him over there.'