The Wee Free Men

Next to the book on sheep was a thin little volume called Flowers of the Chalk. The turf of the downs was full of tiny, intricate flowers, like cowslips and harebells, and even smaller ones that somehow survived the grazing. On the Chalk, flowers had to be tough and cunning to survive the sheep and the winter blizzards.

Someone had coloured in the pictures of the flowers, a long time ago. On the flyleaf of the book was written in neat handwriting 'Sarah Grizzel', which had been Granny's name before she was married. She probably thought that Aching was at least better than Grizzel.

And finally there was The Goode Childe's Booke of Faerie Tales, so old that it belonged to an age when there were far more 'e's around.

Tiffany stood on a chair and took it down. She turned the pages until she found the one she was looking for, and stared at it for a while. Then she put the book back, replaced the chair, and opened the crockery cupboard.

She found a soup plate, went over to a drawer, took out the tape measure her mother used for dressmaking, and measured the plate.

'Hmm,' she said. 'Eight inches. Why didn't they just say!'

She unhooked the largest frying pan, the one that could cook breakfast for half a dozen people all at once, and took some sweets from the jar on the dresser and put them in an old paper bag. Then, to Wentworth's sullen bewilderment, she took him by a sticky hand and headed back down towards the stream.

Things still looked very normal down there, but she was not going to let that fool her. All the trout had fled and the birds weren't singing.

She found a place on the river bank with the right-sized bush. Then she hammered a piece of wood into the ground as hard as she could, close to the edge of the water, and tied the bag of sweets to it.

'Sweeties, Wentworth,' she shouted.

She gripped the frying pan and stepped smartly behind the bush.

Wentworth trotted over to the sweets and tried to pick up the bag. It wouldn't move.

'I wanna go-a toy-lut!' he yelled, because it was a threat that usually worked. His fat fingers scrabbled at the knots.

Tiffany watched the water carefully. Was it getting darker? Was it getting greener? Was that just water-weed down there? Were those bubbles just a trout, laughing?

No.

She ran out of her hiding place with the frying pan swinging like a bat. The screaming monster, leaping out of the water, met the frying pan coming the other way with a clang.

It was a good clang, with the oiyoiyoioioioioioi-nnnnnggggggg that is the mark of a clang well done.

The creature hung there for a moment, a few teeth and bits of green weed splashing into the water, then slid down slowly and sank with some massive bubbles.

The water cleared and was once again the same old river, shallow and icy cold and floored with pebbles.

'Wanna wanna sweeties,' screamed Wentworth, who never noticed anything else in the presence of sweets.

Tiffany undid the string and gave them to him. He ate them far too quickly, as he always did with sweets. She waited until he was sick, and then went back home in a thoughtful state of mind.

In the reeds, quite low down, small voices whispered:

'Crivens, Wee Bobby, did yer no' see that?

'Aye. We'd better offski an' tell the Big Man we've found the hag.'

Miss Tick was running up the dusty road. Witches don't like to be seen running. It looks unprofessional. It's also not done to be seen carrying things, and she had her tent on her back.

She was also trailing clouds of steam. Witches dry out from the inside.

'It had all those teeth!' said the mystery voice, this time from her hat.

'I know!' snapped Miss Tick.

'And she just hauled off and hit it!'

'Yes. I know.'

'Just like that!'

'Yes. Very impressive,' said Miss Tick. She was getting out of breath. Besides, they were already on the lower slopes of the downs now, and she wasn't good on chalk. A wandering witch likes firm ground under her, not a rock so soft you could cut it with a knife.

'Impressive?' said the voice. 'She used her brother as bait!'

'Amazing, wasn't it?' said Miss Tick. 'Such quick thinking... oh, no...' She stopped running, and leaned against a field wall as a wave of dizziness hit her.

'What's happening? What's happening?' said the voice from the hat. 'I nearly fell off!'

'It's this wretched chalk! I can feel it already! I can do magic on honest soil, and rock is always fine, and I'm not too bad on clay, even... but chalk's neither one thing nor the other! I'm very sensitive to geology, you know.'

'What are you trying to tell me?' said the voice.

'Chalk... is a hungry soil. I don't really have much power on chalk.'

The owner of the voice, who was hidden, said: 'Are you going to fall over?'

'No, no! It's just the magic that doesn't work...'